The Eternal War is a deadly and destructive ideological conflict fought over the concept of whether or not the individual should or should not be forced to serve others.

The Eternal War | Doctrine | Power

            “I would be correct, would I not, in believing Martel informed you we’ve passed seven so far? This one will be eight.”

            Commander Bronson De La Bois speaking with obviously deliberate antagonism as he looks down an aristocratic French nose to the files open on the deep mahogany colored worn wooden desk before him. Files strewn about in a not quite casual manner. Records of the program mentees to date, with the current mentee’s file prominently on top. Desk and files all highlighted in the bright midday sun washing through the floor to ceiling glass windows letting on to a view of the Bay and its islands, over to Sausalito and Tiburon. The warmth of the sun flooding through the windows belying the cold of the wind currently blowing through the Golden Gate, across to the East Bay at this time of day. 

             Passed! Bobby Dlamini thinks. He allows himself a brief pause, thinking how much masked rebellion is reflected in the Commander’s manner and voice. These are each and every one a threat we should never have allowed; threats should be hunted down and removed, permanently!

            The young lady, just visible in the room at the end of the hall, seated comfortably on the grey blue overstuffed sofa, intently focused on the video lesson playing on the tablet in her lap, appears to be in her early twenties. Though it seems to get harder to tell the actual age of the young the older Bobby gets. Sensing the gaze upon her, she lifts her eyes to peer down the hallway, to get her first look at this new one. A steady gaze, denoting an actively curious mind, intense, without being insane. The sun from the floor to ceiling windows line the entire side of the apartment from the main room to the living area she is seated in, falls brightly upon her, lighting up her pale skin, pale blue eyes and reddish blond beyond shoulder length hair.

            “Not only are we diverting limited resources away from our primary mission, but these students are immensely dangerous to that mission.” His voice is flat and emotionless in that way only men highly seasoned in death, both on the giving and receiving end, express themselves with. This restraint, making the intent of his words all that much more powerful and unavoidable. It’s the voice of a highly seasoned warrior, a Knight Commander, elder and instructor speaking down to, not his subordinate exactly, but still a junior in The Order. It unmistakably emphasizes for Bobby that Commander De La Bois is one of those who openly disagree with the program.

            Harrison had warned: “He’ll seek to recruit or sideline you.”

            “Seven threats are quite enough.”

            Bobby glances over to observe the body language, the Commander’s features, aged by years and decades of battle, in service to The Order and others before, thinking strongly: Won’t be very many years ahead before I’m old and set in my ways, too. Could be I’ll also be a power in The Order by then.

            Commander De La Bois is a man with many marks of age earned in his more than forty years of service. There’s no doubt however, as Bobby knows from his own observations and mission planning, the Commander’s aged, tall slender frame is yet capable of sustained effort and battle if need be.

His aging face is angular, with a thin-lipped mouth above a strong chin, below deep-set sea blue-colored eyes, all framed by the square jaw and strong cheekbones so many members of The Order possess. Like so many aged warriors, his manner tends to blunt directness, a manner of presentation the uninitiated, the soft and weak, the resentful, misinterpret as arrogance, anger or disdain. An effect made all the stronger by this former French paratrooper, and intelligence community contractor, now senior instructor in the mentee program, keeping to himself even more than the other members of The Order, none of which are known for gregariousness.

            Secretly, and careful to keep it to himself, Bobby wishes he knew the full scope of the mission he’d been tasked to participate in. Harrison had been quite clear, however, and that in no uncertain terms: “the Commander’s to be respected, not trusted, not where the fate of this girl is involved.”

            “We’re not preparing them to live in our future and our world. We’re preparing them to live in their own.” Bobby states, looking down the hallway to the room at the other end, sunlight streaming in, falling across the young lady seated there.

            “We believe at least one of our graduates has already been compromised by one or more intelligence service,” the Commander states. “That alone should be enough to shutter this entire program, and to eradicate every trace of it.” Most certainly meaning, killing the seven before and this one.

             It’s important to remain detached, truly detached, Bobby recognizes. In an instant dropping into the flow, allowing for an emotionless inward flow of information, not giving the Commander any psychological surface to grasp onto. It’s a message: “I may be twenty years your junior, but I too am a battle-hardened member of our Order; I’ve passed through the ordeal.” He can feel the Commander’s penetrating gaze upon him, as he looks once more down the hallway to the current mentee who’s turned back to her studies.

            The Commander had seen the file, and photos, of this Robert Dlamini, but in person he’s certainly something more than the others had been before him. He’s a natural leader, no doubt of that. Large dark brown eyes, almost pure black, lean but muscular build, and midnight black skin unblemished except for the roped scar above his left eyebrow and the ropey scar down the same side of his neck that disappears into the collar of his open jacket and button-down tan linen shirt. There’s something in the loose posture of this man twenty years his junior, something intended to give the impression of being both totally casual and relaxed while ready to move within a fraction of a second in any direction, under total and absolute control.

What few had seen, or knew of, if not having read his file, was how much effort and work had gone into just this posture, after an explosion in the Congo had put Bobby in the infirmary and recovery for more than a year. A year in which Bobby had been forced to relearn many things, recovering slowly from severe injuries to brain and body, almost starting all over to rebuild himself into fighting shape.

            “You’re a rather reserved one.” The Commander says. “One might believe you’d been warned and prepared.”

            “Is there any reason to believe this one might be another security threat, that she might lack the necessary self-restraint?” Bobby asks.

            “Approaches and attempts have been made already. Before she was brought in-house.”

            It’s an uncomfortable sensation the word “traitor” that comes to mind when thinking of this fellow knight, more so when this knight is a Commander. Was there such a thing as a “traitor” in The Order, given the amorphous nature of it? It’s not as if heresy would be a better word, The Order not being the martial arm of a religion. Neither traitor nor heretic are quite the right words, but they are what leap to mind as Bobby hears and senses the Commander. How could either of these things be true within an organization independent of and older than nation states, non-religious, an organization at its very core both traditional and profoundly neutral, not bound to time, place, nor to any institution nor state?

            Bobby shifts his attention once more down the hallway, to the young lady, who takes this moment, using her peripheral vision, to glance sideways at this enigmatic figure looking at her from the other end of the hall. As she listens to the audio of the tailored and personalized fifth-generation warfare scenario playing out on the tablet in her lap.

            “She’s a sharp one, this one!” The Commander, not quite hiding the sneer in his voice. There’s an implied violence in just such a sneer, in his corresponding body posture. From this man of more than six decades. Four decades of which had been spent in perpetual conflict and war, overtly and covertly.

            Bobby turns back to the Commander. Traitor. Heretic. Revolt does not give it full voice. Resistance and disagreement do not express fully what is sensed in the older man. All of this demonstrates a rupture in The Order. Something well beyond a power struggle. Going against the will of the Lord Commander? Preposterous! The Lord Commander is for all intents and purposes the final arbiter, a king in the old, absolute monarch, sense. Lord Commanders do their studies, take council, seek out opposing views and solutions, only then making their decisions, which all within The Order obey.

            “The threats are already multiplying at a rate near beyond our capacities to recognize. There’s no time to be opening up threat vectors from within!” The Commander lets out between clenched lips.

            There can be no mistaking his meaning. Bureaucratic feudalists, petty elites, and their supporting and dependent oligarchs are making their move at every level, everywhere, and all at once, posing a very real threat to The Order and its mission. To say nothing of the threat posed to humanity itself. Seeking to completely enslave the current and all future generations through advances in technology enabled neurolinguistic and banking dominance. Hacking of the human mind and productivity, such it can never, no matter how hard it might seek to, actually break free of the all-encompassing artificial reality tunnel that is bureaucratic feudalist power. The great shared illusion!

Bureaucratic feudalists, so very much like the oligopolist feudalists of old – aristocrats – or so it would on the surface appear, bent on exploiting maximally before disposing of the people. Only differing in their methods and degree to which exploitation is possible. Nothing is quite that simple, however.

            “You believe we should be focusing all our efforts on the Malthusians and Trans-humanists?” Bobby ventures to say.

            “Focus? Don’t joke with me! They must not only be stopped but they must be destroyed. They show no humanity, no understanding nor forgiveness. They seek only to end the game with their eternal war. They lack the ability to understand the game. That’s what they seek to get from us, our knowledge of life.” Those who are not truly alive can never understand, appreciate and foster life.

            “Possibly true. Though it does seem too simple. There’s more to their intentions than we yet see.” Bobby not disagreeing but not willing to give this wily elder a complete pass. Also, not willing to concede the point, given how little of the war any human or group of humans can actually see.

            “We’re making a serious mistake, with this program, thinking we can train the young to wage the war while improving and expanding the game. They lack the experience and self-control to confront the complexity of the threat at this late a stage of the current flaring in the war.” The Commander says, as he looks out across the Bay. The sun dimming slightly, as an ephemeral cloud of white passes between sea and sun. “To say nothing of those who must resource, equip and support them in the battles ahead.”

            Sixteen-year-olds have birthed dynasties and led empires, won great battles and wars. Made innovations which changed the world. Bobby cannot help but think.

There’s no doubting it now. Bobby can’t help but recognize this project has caused a split within The Order. The possibility that we might be providing our hardest earned knowledge on how to wage full-spectrum classical and modern warfare, to wealthy and powerful families whose actual commitment to humanity must always be in question. Families with relationships and resources could use such knowledge to bring about great usury and harm not only to their enemies but to their own people. As history, even a perfunctory search of, will provide far more than numerous examples of. It’s a dangerous path for the Lord Commander and The Order to walk.

            “We should never provide this knowledge to any house, humanist, matrilineal dynasty, or any other.” the Commander grumbles. “The risks to keepers and heritage are far too great!”

            Bobby looks once more down the hallway to the mentee. She’s risen from the sofa and moved to lean against the far wall, lined with old books, tablet in hand, looking back down the hall and straight into Bobby’s eyes. She’s not hiding she knows these two older men, these warriors, are talking about her, are in something of a disagreement. Over what, she cannot know. There’s no doubt of it though in Bobby’s mind, she’s awaiting the outcome of their meeting, this subtle little conflict. Sharp indeed!

            “She’s not had enough time with the materials, nor been assessed and vetted sufficiently, to be given the ordeal,” Bobby agreed. There was something of a self-deprecating tone in his statement, something he knew would trigger the Commander in a way was not quite right. The development of a person’s mind along specific paths, unlocking ways of thinking atrophied for centuries, this was The Order’s unique capacity. Use radical truth in the application of manipulation, coercion and pain, but don’t enjoy it, don’t seek to break or own the other, the Commander would now be thinking. The Order knew the truth and power of these things. All the many orders before had hard earned this knowledge, each subsequent order relearning on the other side of long periods of immense human suffering.

Long ago it had all been recognized for what it is. A set of tools that are not to be removed. Organic hierarchies, and the deeply embedded control mechanisms they engender, cannot be removed without destroying the organism. It goes deep in the biological and bioelectrical makeup of all life, laid there piece by piece across billions of years, to ensure the continuation of life itself. Sparingly, and only where utmost necessary, you use these tools, to imprint, to shape and guide, knowing those who succeed at unlocking deeply embedded awareness and survival circuits within themselves, become powerfully bonded. Many have railed against just such ordeals, not seeing the threads that bind in them, not knowing the strength endowed to all bound by these resulting bonds, these chains. Or being threatened by just the same.

            “I’m not stating we won’t take her through the ordeal,” the Commander says, right on que. Having misinterpreted the statement just as Bobby believed he would. 

            “It’s not given to us to see the whole. Only the few are granted such sight. The rest of us do our part, what we’re instructed to do.” Let the Commander do with this statement as he will.

            “So, you’re here to prepare and take her through?” The Commander looks down the hall to see the young lady in question, her hands on the bookshelf behind her propping her up, staring openly at the two older men. “If only you knew what she is and what will be asked of her should she succeed in the ordeal.”

            Is the old former French warfighter, international intelligence contractor become commander going to give it up, lay out what the plan is for this mentee, what the larger intent is for the program?

            “Her father’s going to adopt her and bring her fully into the family affair. Despite she’s his illegitimate daughter and his legitimate children want none of it and are a very real threat to her.”

            Bobby looked outside, let the surprise of it pass over him invisibly, before actually processing what it meant. Affair. Not, the family business. Not, the family. Affair! Another bastard child, raised on the outside as a pariah, being prepared by the Nobility, to secure the family from the soft chins and weak minds it had developed after a several centuries long, vacation.          

“I’m not talking to hear myself speak.” The Commander states, as Bobby continues to look outside, in silence, giving himself the moments necessary to fully process the meaning of this revelation.

            Of course, you aren’t! Bobby thinks. You’ve no idea what you give away of your own, patrician, biases. What she is. Affair. It’s not just that we’re teaching, vetting and bringing in outsiders, non-combat veterans at that, but we’re collecting and bringing in the bastards of the great houses. Not exactly picking winners, not exactly picking a side, and yet, certainly taking a stance.

            The Commander nods towards the young lady, who’s turned to look out the windowed wall. “Do you believe for a moment these will be able to prevent the collapse?”

            Now they’re getting to it. “It’s not for me to know such things. I do my part.”

            “Well, you’re careful, aren’t you?” The Commander states plainly, looking Bobby in the eyes.

            Bobby smiles inwardly. Perhaps he’d learned to be careful over the years. Maybe he was always a little careful, given when, where and how he’d grown up, the streets of Cape Town. But then again, Harrison had cautioned, “Let nothing out, give no surface for him to grab onto. The Commander’s a seasoned interrogator, but he needs time to really grab hold. Don’t give him that time. Everything is accelerating and our opponents need only delay a thing, not fight it, to bring about its failure.”

            Failure of what exactly? That’s the question pulls lightly at the corners of Bobby’s awareness as he turns back to the Commander. “How could her predecessors have been turned? Has the war evolved that much so quickly as to make our preventative measures that ineffectual? Are we now this known?”

            “The Earl’s here now. Perhaps he’ll be able to prevent further failure.” From the tone of his voice, Bobby can immediately tell the Commander doesn’t believe his own statement.

            Bobby knows his role; he’s the only here as guide for the ordeal. For this he’d been prepped to seek more of the pattern upon his arrival, starting with this conversation and the first meeting with Commander De La Bois. He also knows seeing it all in its fullness is not something required of his task.

            “The finality of it all!” The Commander states, as he looks down the hallway to the young lady staring back at them. A young lady with not the slightest idea what would be demanded of her.

            The damage of the program being compromised was not the issue. Not the reason for the Commander’s disquiet and revulsion. The Order operated decentralized enough that no substantive nor permanent damage could be done. The reputation loss however, having failed to secure against just such a threat as an insider threat. Admitting this, allowing it to stand, was simply not something The Order could permit. The very fact Bobby had been called in early was a tell. A rather strong one invisible to anyone but those few close to this very project and this particular illegitimate young lady preparing to face an ordeal unlike anything imagined.

The Lord Commander knows his people, and their strengths. Bobby had always taken solace in this, making it possible to accept he’d only ever be given parts, not even all the parts he would need for his tasks. Only those few starting points necessary to his finding the delicate beginning of a pattern.

            Bobby can see the young lady, still leaning, back to the bookcase, has returned to her studies on the tablet back in hand. This, as the Commander motions towards her.

            “Imbalance.” The Commander says.

            There can be no doubt this all is about power, power at the heart of the Commander’s treason and heresy. If it wasn’t about balance, the Commander wouldn’t be in command here. The leader of the opposition may not get to determine the objective, but they, as is the nature of structures and hierarchies, get to lead the program to it. The fact the Lord Commander had not appointed another meant the opposition to this program had real power behind it, within The Order at least. This is not the imbalance the Commander is referencing, however.

            Commander De La Bois turns and looks squarely at Bobby. Enough words. Enough words for the minds of men highly skilled in the arts of The Order. The Lord Commander had sent Bobby to be the guide for the ordeal. That wasn’t done lightly or because this one was simply the man available.

            Bobby can tell the Commander is probing, but it isn’t going to reach Bobby’s inner core, that rock solid center every member of The Order can rely upon in even the most difficult of times and situations. A rocky core found in the ordeal. Okay. Go ahead, sir. Look upon me. Bobby thinks, turning back to face the Commander. The slightest of smiles appears on Bobby’s face, just as a bearded man shows in the room where the young lady is, well-armed and prepared, obvious to anyone well trained in the signs.

            “And that is?” Bobby asks.

            “Carl, the Earl’s XO. Though that’s not what he calls himself. Anyone who isn’t a fool can see he’s the Earl’s right hand.”

            Bobby examines the man down the hall, in that deeply assessing sort of way only men of certain backgrounds develop. So, it is the Earl, and that’s Carl. He’s from here originally, or so the records stated at the castle. Handpicked by the Earl for this very effort. Short and squat, built like a truck, though with an obvious hitch in his movements from a hip injury earned in combat in Iraq. Getting older. But so too was the Earl. Hell, they all were for that matter. This was no young man’s business.

            The Commander notices the subtle fluctuation of energies, as Bobby shifts his attentions from Carl to his charge. Yes, the threat level is that high, even here! This one might be a bastard child, but she’s the daughter of someone, and is being prepared for highest level conflict in defense of her family. If the Earl, the Senior Continuity Commander had been called here, with his handpicked men. Then the threat and danger are very real, imminent and persistent.

            “That would imply…she’s…” Bobby starts, having picked up a piece in the movement.

            “Yes, she’s being prepared for full induction. Raedbora’s orders.” The Commander pauses, to let the weight of it settle in, recognizing Bobby is seeing more of the pattern now. “Her training is to include full-spectrum classical, irregular and fifth generation warfare, so she’s fully prepared upon adoption into her father’s house.”

            “That’s quite the impossible challenge she’s been given.” Bobby responds. He could remember the difficulties and hardships of his own studies, before his ordeal, and that after a decade on the Teams and half a decade as a high-end merc across Africa.

            “The only knowledge she’s to be denied is The Order’s continuity infrastructure.” The Commander clenches his jaw briefly upon stating this. “Most everything else we know, she’s to be given access to, should she ask for it.” From his posture and tone, Bobby can see this deeply angers the Commander.

            “Surely she can’t command, with no combat experience?” Bobby ponders out loud. The implications!

            The Commander merely turns to look out across the Bay, cloud free once more.

            This is something, more of the pattern. There’s something about this one, unlike the previous seven. Something not only worthy of such high security as to bring in the Earl and his most trusted and capable people. But also, to be prepared for command, despite not having the requisite background and experience, being little more than a teen. Surely this bastard child carried the old genes? But which ones.

            The Commander, growling: “This’s a dangerous plan…this one…if the design is wrong…by even the smallest margin. Neutrality will be lost, and everything will accelerate uncontrollably.”

            This one. This bastard. Does he recognize the deep-rooted disdain he’s demonstrating? The disdain of the legitimate born, those raised inside the walls, against their siblings not so fortunate. The threat of the capable bastard faced by the far too often less than capable legitimate born.

            “One must wonder what the position of the gatekeepers, family members and family office staff and advisors is in and around her father’s house.” Bobby articulates. There are millennia of history, of just such sorts being threatened by illegitimates. None of it’s a pleasant history. In truth it’s some of humanity’s darkest histories. Murders upon murders upon far worse fates born by bastard and parent.

            “Gatekeepers! Bah!” De La Bois growls deeper while grinding the toe of his shoe into the throw rug beneath him. A visceral reaction to gatekeepers and so-called experts. “They believe only they know truth, only they know the mind of their master. They lack history! Damnable Emissaries, all.”

            Bobby employs a breathing technic to relax his muscles, to back away from the fight. The Commander may not have stated it, but his posture and tone are borderline open declarations of war. No mistaking, however, he’s in command here. There’s an ancient dance to these things. Those with power who disagree most must be those who monitor from close proximity so they may abort the effort rapidly at the first signs of failure. Regardless, that’s a verified descendant to at least one great house in the other room. Obviously, or she wouldn’t be here. The geneticists and genealogists would have confirmed it beyond a doubt.  So, she’s to be afforded by The Order, all courtesies, preparations, and protections.

            Harrison had instructed him: “You’re to teach her loyalty in all its forms.” Which now makes sense. One cannot command loyalty if they themselves know not who and what to be loyal to, if they know not what loyalty is.

            “She’s very much the outsider,” Bobby puts forward, thinking back through the limited file on Annabelle Morozov. Seeing her posture in the room at the other end of the hallway.

            “Ignorant and naïve, yes,” the Commander responds. “I take it you’ll engender in her the young’s response to the confidante, to trust. To be followed…” Commander De La Bois shrugs.

            Bobby will betray no sentiment. A knight obeyed. I am a mentor. And it is… Harrison’s orders and the mentor’s training required a specific sequence of events be carried out deliberately and carefully.

            To the Commander, Bobby states, “I take it it’s the father whose neuropsychometric profile is very much like that of my own. This would make the most sense. Do we know if this is the case?” This is a pure phishing exercise. The man he’s encoding her for could be any sort of individual out there in the big world.

            “No.”

            Bobby holds his silence. He’d not expected revelation, but it’d been remarked by more than one that psychometrically he bore a resemblance to the older Senior Knight Commander Bertrand Von Mises. Both Bobby and Bertrand were foreign born and raised former Navy SEALs and mercs. The United States does not hold a monopoly on aristocratic warrior genes. Nor does Europe for that matter. The institutional memory of his family in the former British Dominion and those of his years of service, even with mission and unit related skewing and limiting, provided important clues as to the full shape of this mentee program. Despite all the missing pieces the Lord Commander’s instructions had intentionally left out.

Bobby, who’d learned to depend on his knowledge and understanding of the Marshall back at The Order’s beginning. Felt a deep sense of obligation to listen to that knowledge now. Cycles of rise, decay and fall. Over and over again across the centuries, in recognizable patterns. Relating to the current time and task, this knowledge gives off such an incredibly intense sense of foreboding Bobby has to resort automatically to the Vow to Life as he’d been taught when first introduced to The Order:

            “I reject the artificial worlds of words to secure that which cannot be defined, life. Words are but a symbolic language devoid of reality. Words are lies that allow only illusion. There is no force more destructive to life than words. Beware most the lie of words that speak of secret knowing. For there is only life.”

            Balance returns to Bobby’s inner core.

            The slightly glassed look in Bobby’s eyes hints to the Commander he’s struck a chord, but that the younger knight’s training has kicked in. It’s enough however to recognize the capacities of this South African, of Zulu descent, he’s no slouch, no fool, no special assignment. He’s not one of those The Order sends out who is barely capable of the task, of conducting himself without embarrassing The Order. It does nothing to attempt to hide things from someone with this degree of inner development, not even when possessing the same training, work and skill yourself. Well, nothing for it then, he’s stepping into it fully now. Let him know the full extent of what he’s facing in this deadly game, this dangerous program!

            “I don’t think this one will survive long enough to see herself join that family,” the Commander states leadingly.

            Bobby doesn’t bite. “Tell me about her relationships,” he asks. Remaining on mission. The young lady’s safety may be the Earl’s primary mission. Bobby’s however is the order and preparations for.

            “She doesn’t have relationships; only mentors and teachers.”

            “Are they all the Earl’s people?”

            “No, there are those remaining from before, some of my people,” not quite a smirk in the Commander’s voice. Not quite. I still have power here.

            “I will need to meet them.” He keeps his gaze down the hall where Carl is leaning idly against the wall, just inside the doorway, G27 barely visible inside his beltline. The obvious bulges of low vis body armor and concealed radio, weapons and magazines. Bobby realizes with a sudden start, Carl’s watching him, casually intent. Carl’s a message from the Earl! But not for Bobby. A warning the Commander cannot help but see. She’s under our protection!

            “I should think it’s the Earl you’re most interested to meet,” the Commander states.

            “And others.”

            “You don’t wish to be introduced to her first?”

            “I’ve already made contact with her during this very conversation.” Bobby nods down the hallway where the young lady is once more looking at him. “She’s quite aware, isn’t she.”

            “I’ve only read reports on the others. But she does seem to be something…different.” The Commander begrudgingly responds. “Those damnable old bloodlines and the memory within!”

            Bobby suppresses an involuntary reaction at the readiness for violent action in the Commander’s words and attitude. There’s not a single hint the Commander holds even the remotest human connection with this young lady, this illegitimate. A sentiment most probably shared by her soon to be family members, if they even know of her pending arrival and role.

            While Bobby is thinking, the clouds from the sea obscure the sun from the Bay once again. A cold wind must certainly be blowing down there across the Marina pouring in through the Golden Gate, across, over and under the bridge. Bobby having looked away; Annabelle lifts the tablet in hand and once again resumes her studies. Preparing herself for what exactly she can’t know. Nervous and excited!

            “What does she do when she’s alone?” Bobby asks.       

            “Mostly spends time in her room, going through the online library. She’s tried, dangerously, to venture out alone, but we’ve firmly discouraged this.”

            “Can’t imagine she hasn’t come to hate us, then.” Bobby states.

            “I’m certain of it.”

            “That’s created a difficulty will have to be addressed first. Hard to be loyal to those one hates.”

            “Certainly, someone of your capacities, a mentor, can have no doubts about his ability to properly adapt hate.”

             “A somewhat attractive young lady,” Bobby comments, again not biting.

            As he watches the young lady in the room at the end of the hallway, Bobby begins to have a new appreciation of what the founder of The Order had achieved. Marshall had employed the dispossessed and bastards throughout his entire active adult lifetime – for roughly fifty years, one after the other. The Marshall had been no ordinary force of nature. He’d been an unmovable object in history, not forcing, not directing, but ensuring continuity in things: social systems, natural and unnatural conflicts, forms of government, rituals, religion, families, bloodlines. Were it not for his steadfastness and loyalty and his capacity to engender such in others, no matter their status and station, the modern world would never have come to be. The balancing weight of the Regent’s passage had left nothing in the West untouched, not least of all, knighthood and the lives of duty sustain it.

            The Marshall had called it “The Way” and mentees like this before Bobby now had figured prominently in The Way, the journey of individuals from obscurity to highest level service, through breaking and redeveloping self, in finding who and what to be loyal to, and how. Bobby had studied The Order’s accounts, the family histories, the only complete record remaining in the world of the Marshall, the Regent, in his own time and place. Even now, centuries on, consciously and unconsciously reaffirming their commitment, members of The Order bow to the four corners of the earth, mouthing each in their own native language, “May we honor the way you set before, guiding those who walk the path after.”

            Once, it had been the place of priests and their acolytes to push obeisance to God and religion, to Crowns, earthly and unearthly. But this thing, this reaffirmation, had developed its own momentum, becoming a pervasive compulsion in an order of men and women not bound to a church, a religion, nor to any kingdom. Even the most secular of knights said to themselves: “It is right we should say these things.” This mantra was an accomplishment not even the finest religious, political engineers nor military traditions of the world could master or match. The Regent had surpassed the world’s greatest religions, to pass down unbroken a way of total service to humanity’s extraordinary familial heritage. We endure that life may sustain. Even eight hundred years after his death, The Order remained powerless to replicate or change the central core of his extraordinary accomplishment.

            “Who has charge of her spiritual training?” Bobby asks.

            “No one,” the Commander replies. “Why bother? If she fails in the ordeal, her own concepts on such things will be her own and none of it will matter to us.”

            The young lady at the end of the hall completed her lesson for the morning. Without looking down the hallway at the observers there, she leaves the room via a door to the left, away from the wall of windows. Carl, too, moves with her without giving a single glance down the hallway. Though his passing leaves a physical void in the space that could be felt at the other end of the hallway by those looking.

            “Those are the Earl’s people,” Commander De La Bois states. “They’re capable, unobtrusive and quiet. Quite disconcerting in their readiness. Do you know about his birth mother? She was on the path to become one of us before she fled Europe in the late sixties. Her own father having prepared her for the ordeal, before his premature demise. Beyond even what the Earl’s own mother did with him in his early years, he’s teaching that girl things better never shared!”

            From his study of the dossier Martel provided for his pre-mission preparation and planning, Bobby knows there had been three attempts on the life of the young lady already. Not to mention several kidnapping attempts over the years. One of those attempts, almost successful, had seen the program move the young lady to the US and the introduction of the Earl and his continuity team. There’s far more than enough threat in the world set against this young lady, quite aside from that Bobby senses in the form of Commander De La Bois and the faction he represents within The Order.

            Interesting days ahead!

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The many institutions, organizations and systems established to limit and reduce resentment must be infiltrated, controlled and turned against Adoptables, Responsibles and all Resentfuls not currently in power.

The Eternal War | Doctrine | Systems | Resentfuls’ Principle

These places are always nondescript from the street. These many millions of dollars mansions in any of the coastal towns of Southern California. Those in Laguna Beach being no different. Early waits in the warm SoCal sun in a palm tree shaded and intricately designed steel gate masking area just off the street end of Marina. The gate that will let him pass along the short drive to park beside the concrete fountain in front of the four-car garage. All of this committed to memory. The parking area and garage where he will park a status symbol and marker for real wealth, with space larger than most people’s entire homes left vacant and open. Space costing two thousand dollars a square foot or more, left unused most days of the year.

With the window open, pulling slowly into the drive, he can hear waves sushering in and out along the coast out on the private beach, just the other side of the low-slung multilevel wrap around mansion. If you’ve seen one of these, you’ve seen them all. Each room a rectangular box with floor to ceiling windows in every room letting on to the views of the Pacific and the extraordinary sunsets make coastal California one of the most unique places on earth. It will of course be immaculately and sparsely furnished with the very most expensive minimalist furniture a fortune can have bespoke.

As Early approaches the heavy solid dark stained wood double doors fitted with thick oversized artificially aged bronze hinges, lion shaped knockers, hand hammered rivets and forge cast door handles. He prepares himself. This isn’t a social call. Inside will not be a comfortable afternoon of drinks and conversation around the infinity pool overlooks the beach and ocean. There’s violence on the other side of those doors. Oh, the invitation from the Lord Commander had been innocent enough. But his being here at all, at this time, with everything heating up as it is, can only mean one thing, violence.

He need not knock, as the doors are opened just as he reaches them. A sign from those inside, we see you and are tracking your every movement. It’s one of the Lord Commander’s people who opens the door. Trenton Moore. A youngish man the Earl had trained and placed in Harrison’s service personally. Former junior SAS gone on to educate as an accountant. One of the best at close in protection. He’s unarmed and too loose in his manner. It’s a confirming signal. Violence!

“Follow me My Lord. The Lord Commander will join you in the main room momentarily.”

On his way in, there’d been no vehicles parked on the drive nor in the parking area. Nothing to give away who and how many are in the house. This house and location had not been chosen randomly, however. In operations like these, your adversary never leaves anything to chance. During the flight down from San Francisco Early had been fed information as it was obtained by the intel team at the Castle.

The mansion he’s now entering is an incredibly high-priced rental owned by a Swiss bank and managed by a firm in Manhattan. All of which has implications, just not enough for the Earl to grasp the pattern yet, for him to make first order approximate calculations. Other than that whatever threat he’s about to face, has covered its tracks quite well in the age of persistent global surveillance. Which requires real forethought, intent and wealth!

Trenton leaves Early in the main room, a giant cavernous space with high ceilings accentuated even more by the low flung luxuries and comfortable yet minimalist furniture ensures views of the ocean no matter where one is seated. As with the parking area, this is a space, this one room, larger than most houses in this part of the world, with the median house cost in Laguna being around four million dollars. This common area alone being roughly that. There’s no other purpose for the size of this room than to subtly not so subtly inform guests that whomever owns or occupies this house is not only wealthy, they’re rich beyond most all imaginings of most all people. Another piece of this puzzle.

“Early, so good of you to make the trip down.” The Lord Commander, entering from the darkened wood paneled room leads off to the left, in one of the wings of the house. Harrison crossing to where Early’s standing, hand outstretched. We are not alone. The outstretched hand of the Lord Commander being a prearranged sign between them. “It tis an incredible view. I hear the sunset is simply marvelous.”

“The Lord Commander orders, and I obey.” Early states with a slight smile to his voice. This too is a prearranged message. One which states the Earl has understood and set those things necessary in motion. A signal keys Harrison and his people to not give the slightest sign, but to be prepared for anything at any moment. “What is it the Lord Commander requires?”

“We must move up the ordeal. She’s to go through it the soonest.”

“She’s ready. Though I defer to Bobby in the final assessment as to her readiness.” Neither the Earl nor the Lord Commander give off any indication there is anything amiss. But the Earl can recognize the Lord Commander is seeking something from him, a performance, for those watching and listening. Both display and warning.

Early turns to look out over the ocean, one of the giant windowpanes having been rolled aside along the tracks hidden in the floor and ceiling, to let in a large swath of sea air, to take in the maximal cool sea breeze warmed slightly as it crosses the sun heated sands of the private beach. He takes in the smell of the ocean, of the sand, the sound of the waves as they fall upon themselves at times, upon the sands other times. He can smell, feel and taste the slightly ionized salty air. It is a beautiful and serene place. But it’s not why he’s here. Him specifically.

There’s a pattern to be found here. One with only the slightest of information. None of which is clear, certain or even really related directly to itself. Find the Markov Blanket. “Confirm, the ordeal’s to be administered at the earliest possible time.” Early states, having turned back to look Harrison directly in the eyes. Seeing beyond Harrison to the open door, off behind him, the door from which he’d entered the main room. There are watchers and listeners there in that room, he knows from decades of hard experience, hard negotiations and recoveries. All of this is for them.

“I confirm.” Harrison states, his left hand giving the two-finger confirmation code in such a way only the two of them, and no watchers with eyes or cameras, can see.

Then it’s true. All of this, whatever this is, is about Annabelle. Pieces. Pieces of a puzzle. Most people like to believe clandestine and covert operations are carried out with every little piece, every step, every move, every countermove and countermove to the countermove, thought out, known and planned for. But that’s just not how operations happen, those which must as a core principle maintain plausible deniability at every level and in every step and response. No. The world of power, real power, is far more Markovian in nature. Things are set in motion, with, what can be known, known, what can be done, done. The rest being left up to the near randomness of the universe, and to the adaptive skill of those involved.

“While I would never question the Lord Commander’s right to a comfortable getaway. It does seem a bit much to travel all this way to tell me this. And this place is rather more sumptuous than any I’ve known you to take before.” Again, a pleasant smile and joking manner. Disarm those who watch.

“Sometimes we choose the location and time not for ourselves but for those who serve us. This out of respect for the other.” Harrison, the Lord Commander, responds. Emphasis ever so slightly on other. “Do we not also have a duty to them, that they may benefit from the fruits of our combined labors?”

Those who serve us, others, combined labors. These are key logs and Harrison has shared them specifically, memetic data points to help Early find an edge to the Markov Blanket. Those who serve, those who are served. There’s an edge here. Service. Service to whom and to what? The Order and its people serve human life, the mothers of. Who is against just this? Hidden houses, consumptive mothers, despotic genetic lineages. Slavers! But which faction, or both?

Everything has been accelerating and expanding of late. Over the course of the previous several weeks. Globally, regionally, locally, all the tensions increasing. Probes after probes after probes at every level and into everything. The factions looking for the weak points, seeking opportunities and entry points to exploit. Laying the groundwork for something. Something dark and murderous at scale. Power does not give up power. Even if not doing so leads to utter ruin. Resentfuls are incapable of surrender, and will burn the world and all within it to the ground, themselves as well, the moment they believe they’re going to lose even the slightest power. For them it’s absolutely everything or nothing for no one at all.

He and the team had updated everything, their posture and operations, with emphasis on all the movement and escape plans, the continuity infrastructure. They’d changed out personnel, resources and moved assets to other locations. All to ensure no pattern of life existed to be exploited. Excepting traps carefully lain. Some obvious, some slightly visible, most utterly unseeable and unknowable. This had all been done exceedingly carefully such the changes didn’t themselves generate any signatures other than intentional ones. Yet, Early hasn’t been able to shake the sense something is coming. Some major change in steady state. That something wicked this way comes. From which faction, from which direction, directed at whom and to what end? None of it is visible just yet. This event though is a substantive piece.

Responsibles’ oligarchs have begun fighting back, making great strides in showing out the many sins of the bureaucratic state, its pet oligarchs and enforcers. The actions of the states themselves, their lawfare against oligarchs and the people, entire swaths of legal actions and new laws rolled out to stifle speech, to shut the people up, to scare everyone into hunkering down, to just take whatever the slaver state throws at them. To steal as much as possible before the immune system of humanity kicks in. Forcing humanity to die verbally and physically defenseless. More power! Though the very opposite is occurring, the very real threat of civil wars is only increasing. Civil wars they’re seeking with all that they are to shunt off with a massive global war with peers, with nuclear powers. Insanity! The genocidal suicide of it all.

Pieces and pieces. This is all, even this thirty-five-million-dollar mansion overlooking the sea, a piece. The movements and people here. Its all a set piece, a dance, a known and ancient dance of power. The Lord Commander here when there are vast efforts he must oversee. All of it pieces!

Those who serve us.

Who do these serve? Those who are not us. Riches, wealth and power. Banks, offshore trust structures, powerful attorneys and overly well-connected property management firms, disintermediation upon disintermediation. Extractive dependency infrastructure, all of it. Intricately woven, many layered artificial realities. Layers upon layers of illusions. Inevitably, the factions, having taken all they can, the illusions are coming undone, as they begin to turn upon one another. Unknowingly, out of arrogance, they do leave signatures however, for those who know how to stitch the tapestry from the threads provided.

“One single man did more to shape the European world than any other.” Early puts out to see if the gross approximation is worthy of any response.

“Constantine began the process of virtualized empire. An empire still extant covering much of the world, almost a billion and a half citizens.” The Lord Commander responds. “A lesson too many would-be kings, queens and emperors have failed to heed. Even so the merchant kings of the last century and today.”

Much had been lost by many in the early part of the nineteen hundreds, in World War I, and all the way up through the late nineteen eighties. All the terrestrial, geographic-based kingdoms and empires, the noble estates. Many of Western Europe’s aristocratic elites, holding dearly to long empty titles, still decry the failure of the Fascists to reinstate the old ways, to remove self-rule, to return to dictatorial rule. Had the Fascists not been militarily defeated by the Russians, the old ways would have inevitably been restored, consumptive and unaccountable absolute monarchial power. The children and grandchildren of the fascists and the many hollow aristocratic houses that remained, all those who’d secretly hoped for a return to pre-WWI power and extractive ownership. These have been aging rapidly. Quit despite their age and access to information, having still not learned from Constantine’s example.

They thought they understood the virtual empire of Constantine. But they fail to even begin to comprehend. Yes, leaders, old, very old wealth and power use puppet governments, movements, institutions and causes, layers upon layers of complexity. All to mask the real center and paladins of power. Employing a vast portfolio of known fights and conflicts so easy to spin up into the visible world, shape into the warfare that is kinetic warfare, state actors against state actors, non-state actors against state actors, oligarchs versus oligarchs, lords versus lords, and all combinations thereof.

All to hide the real world, the actual world. The world Constantine initiated the hiding of almost two thousand years ago. But not for personal gain. For the people. All of this, mastering the seven elements of power, in order to hide and preserve the real emperor and his leading knights and lords, the paladins, all to ensure these survive such they can continue to provide for and secure the people, their people. What the Lord Commander whishes him to see, is all an extension of all of this. The past seventeen hundred years.

“Vengeance and restoration before it’s too late.” Early states loud enough for all to hear. Harrison remaining without response, except for a twinkle in his old eyes only his former mentee can see. Both men prepare for violence. Vengeance being the agreed upon code word. He’s found the pattern of who these are, which Resentfuls faction.

Early, adjusting the collar of his black sports jacket presses the flat black graphite button invisibly hidden within the lapel, keying the single use print manufactured graphite radio hidden inside the seam, telling the team to initiate. The response is almost immediate!

The slightly open door to the room Harrison had entered from is flung open and two smartly dressed men with H&K MP5s at the ready enter the main room. Their weapons casually trained on Harrison and Early who remain calmly standing with their hands visible.  Early doesn’t need to turn to look, he can hear another person behind him, a male by the weight of his step, whose come from the hallway on the opposite side of the great room.

A tall and fit blond haired and light blue-eyed man, mid-forties, in an immaculately tailored dark colored suit exits the side room to stand between the two men had preceded him. Careful to never in thier field of fire. A look of wary bemusement on his face. He gives the Lord Commander a knowing look before turning his attentions to assess the Earl. The kind of assessment only men of violence and those who lead men of surgical violence can engage in. The kind of quick yet thorough assessment only men of certain experiences, life threatening experiences, can do. Men of real power. That most ancient power. Cold hard murder.

“Beyond jamming communications. What’ve you set in motion?” The tall man asks in perfect English but with a slight German accent. Raising his hand before Early can respond. “I caution you. We’re quite well covered by stand-off here and I’ve more than enough men in the building now to deal with any force you may have coming through the doors, windows, walls or any other means of entry.”

Early, having conducted his own same assessment, smiles and nods his head slightly in response before answering. “You’ve thirteen combatants with you, not including yourself. There are only two heavy weapons and two surface to air weapons plus your personal pistols, eleven MP5s and a small number of flashbangs and HE grenades. We project you’ve ammunition for perhaps a thirty-minute firefight.” He pauses to let it settle upon this man what the Earl knows. “You also have four individuals, not counting the Lord Commander’s people, who're not combatants in the structure below.”

At this the man stiffens, his hand instinctively going towards the pistol he has beneath his jacket. Before the others can respond however he visibly backs himself down from killing. The others in the room keying off of him also back down, only modestly, however. It may yet all go to blood. So, this one is a professional of some elevated skill and experience. To recognize a greater threat so quickly, speaks volumes.

The man nods his head in recognition. One man of death to another. “Defense in layers.”

“I’m going to reach into my inner pocket with my right hand to retrieve my phone. May I do so now? As your scanners identified when I passed through the door, I am unarmed.”

“Yes.” The tall man nods. Looking at his men, the two beside him and the one on the other side of the room that Early has yet to turn to look at. In this not looking, demonstrating a lack of concern, as he’s in control here now.

Early reaches into his jacket and pulls out the Samsung Galaxy Z folding phone. Moving forward three steps to the massive wood and glass coffee table fills this part of the main room. Leaving the phone with the gallery app open unlocked there. Backing away to Harrison. Allowing the man to move to the table to take the phone.

Before looking at the image on the phone, the man looks to Harrison, “You were to tell your people nothing.” To which Harrison merely shrugs. “You didn’t need to.” The man continues. Harrison only smiling in reply. The smile of a wise old man. A man of a very old lineage survived all of this many times in its long history. A man who once moved and worked in the shadows, who was and is still, even at his advanced age, a man of careful, surgically precise violence.

Looking at the phone and the image there, swiping through the first eight to ten images. The man’s face goes from calm surprise to anger and then to resignation and back to calm. “We didn’t stand a chance did we?” Looking to the Earl’s emotionless face. “How did you so quickly and without our knowing gather all this information?”

“Did you think we didn’t know about the full sensor and communications suits on the fleets of self-driving cars so innocuously moving here and there, about their actual purpose?” It had been too easy to trace the funding for these vehicles, to work out what sensors were aboard from the various financial statements of the companies involved. The man only nods his head in admission of the fact these fleets house an ever-increasing array of sensors, AI and comms to map out absolutely every movement of every person whether on the street or in their home or any other building.

Sensors capable of identifying concealed or stored weapons, ammunition, explosives, heat and chemical signatures and increasingly ever more sophisticated biosignatures. Not to mention the full suite of communications intercepting and capturing resources onboard these very same vehicles we think nothing of as we see them driving around all over every day. And yet to think, with all this investment, the entry and hack of any given vehicle would be so easy.

“You’ve four sniper observer posts out there and a quick reaction force of another eleven heavily armed men three minutes away.” The Earl, now the hardened killer looking his adversary commander directly in the eyes. “Not a one will be able to get off a single shot nor to move, before we eliminate them.”

“We’ve additional assets in multiple locations should you break free from here. You will not get out of the area alive.” The man, cold and hardened killer, responding in-kind.

“There’s no doubt of that. It’s why there’s a targeted energy weapon pointed at this very building now.” Shaking his head as the tall man starts to open his mouth to respond. “Everyone dies here in this place. Even Harrison and I if need be. If we do, my men will take out your QRF and S/Os where they are, leaving your signature on all of it. Forcing your superiors to contend with the inevitable blowback from the cartel you engaged to provide those men and equipment.”

The man looks to the Lord Commander with a look that is mixture of anger, surprise and admiration. He and his men are the very best in the world. The very best money and ideological loyalty can buy. And still. “His Lordship is both effective and unpredictable, surprising even to me who has known him half his life.” Harrison states in a steady emotionless and truth conveying manner.

Early looks to his old mentor and nods his head in respect before turning back to the tall man who has put the phone down on the table once more before turning and motioning to his people to put their weapons down.

“As you’ve already surmised. I’ve people here who cannot be put in harm’s way.” The tall man, rapidly recognizing the reality of the situation from his own deep pool of experience, states. “You can take your people and go.” Motioning to the man in the hallway entry to bring their guests up from the secure thick and heavy walled belowground safe room and wine cellar into the main room.

“We’ve already notified El Norte we know of their involvement, showing them live satellite imagery of their people in their current ready locations and posture. We’ve articulated no harm has been done and there’s no need at this time for us to initiate lessons of accountability.” The Earl looks the tall man in the eyes again. The tall man nodding his understanding. There’ll be no employing the cartel and its extensive capabilities to finish the wet work after this man, this British Earl, has gotten his wards to safety. The cartel will want to keep their involvement private and won’t be used again in this manner by this faction against this target.

Early crosses the short distance to retrieve his phone. His other hand outstretched to the tall man. One may be enemy combatants on the field and in the Eternal War, but it doesn’t mean one doesn’t extend all curtesy to the other. Even to Nazis. The tall man hesitates a moment, demonstrating more about his background and upbringing than he realizes, before straightening and taking the Earl’s hand, shaking it once firmly. The forms of chivalry obeyed, the tall man moves back to his two men, while Early moves to the Lord Commander and the two men and a woman brought into the main room.

As the Lord Commander and his people move to the front entrance, Early, the last in the group, turns to the tall man once again. “As I’m certain you’ve already surmised. You and your people are not to move from here for the next three hours.” The tall man nods once curtly. The Lord Commander and his people now at the front door, the jamming field on the building is released, as per the pre-arranged signal. The Earl immediately getting an update text on his phone via the secure hidden app his people use, turns to look, one last time, to the tall man. “You’ll find, now that your communications are up once more, that your QRF and S/Os have already departed, called off by their masters.”

“Another time then, Your Lordship.” The tall man states, looking Early unbreaking in the eye with those cold piercing murderous German eyes. Eliciting only a respectful nod from Early as he turns to go out the door, to see the last of their people getting into the two up armored Suburbans brought around for the trip to JNP in Newport Beach and the private jet out, back to Marin County.

“Early, I don’t believe you’ve yet met Bertrand von Mises.” The Lord Commander sitting in the second row of seats behind the driver, turning to look from Early in the seat beside him to the Belgian nobleman seated in the back seat. As Early turns and reaches back to shake the hand of Bertrand.

“Impressive work, My Lord.” Betrand smilingly says to Early.

“Early, please.” The Earl states. Attaining a nod from the aristocrat in the back seat who looks very familiar. At least his presence does.

Turning back to the Lord Commander. “How did they take you?”

“Did they?” The Lord Commander says, smilingly in the way only wise old men of immense experience can. Early nodding with a rue smile in recognition of the pattern.

“Dangerous dance.” Early says, turning to look forward and around through the one-way polarized windows as the two vehicles speed their way to the waiting jet.

“Not with you and your people out there.” It isn’t flattery. It’s a statement of fact that also recognizes as reality the ploy could have gone horribly wrong.

“We’ve a lock on their aircraft. Does it meet with an unfortunate malfunction over open land or sea?” Trenton asks the Lord Commander.

Bertrand from the back seat. “Should let them run, Lord Commander.”

“Yes. If they’re moving this openly, time they realize we’re not an easy target.” Harrison, turning to look to Early. “Countermand what I know you’ve already set in motion. If it can be called back.”

“You know me far too well.” Early grinning like the Cheshire Cat. “It’s not too late. Though they’re going to meet with electrical malfunctions before they ever take off.” The grin widening even further.

“Early, did they move against your ward? Projections were high the moment you moved against them in recovering us, they would move against the San Francisco site.” Bertrand asks.

“They did not. Even had they. My ward is not at the site presently and is in a safe location never used previously. Just in case.” He and his team had made all the projections themselves and agreed it was not a high probability, but not zero, that whomever had taken the Lord Commander and his people would strike out the moment they realized The Order would not just go along.

More of the purpose is showing itself now to Early’s deeply analytic mind. The Lord Commander’s intent. An incredibly dangerous course The Order is now shaping itself up around. This is no minor faction has set itself against the project and perhaps against The Order itself. “Harrison, I’m beginning to see the edges of it. This is no small matter you’ve determined to make a stand on. If I’m actually seeing it, the reasoning you’re following. Then everything changes and we may well not survive.”

“What are you seeing?” Harrison asks, looking over his shoulder to Bertrand. Implying he should listen.

“The world Constantine set in motion is finally and thoroughly being threatened. The people are genuinely at risk. The move to other than a return on labor economy, to a return on Capital economy, is rapidly removing the need for human beings. Humans who truly create and drive all things.

“While also posing an ever-present threat to the bureaucrats and petty elites.” Bertrand comments from the back.

“Go on.” Harrison instructs.

“The People were always the balance of power between the king, the bureaucratic state, the aristocrats, oligarchs and temporary tyrants. Remove the people, out of a lack of need for their labor contributions and you remove this balance of power. You disrupt ancient and powerfully embedded dependencies human existence depends upon. Dependencies, no machines, no matter how intelligent, can replicate and compensate for.”

“Is it too late?” Harrison looking once more to Bertrand to ensure he’s both listening and internalizing, as these are pieces he requires for his part to be fulfilled properly.

“That’s hard to see at this point. There are neocons and neolibs, aristocrats and oligarchs, and so many petty and excess elites alike who relish the idea of a forever war waged between them by machines and machine intelligence with only a smattering of humans to serve them and to be fought over. There are other bureaucrats, aristocrats and oligarchs who’re not interested in forever war but who very much believe a future where machines and machine intelligence serve their every desire, a world without lesser humans to have to bother with.”

Early closes his eyes, seeking to find the alternative. “Only an equally capable and powerfully conceived return to traditional yet greatly updated feudalism can provide a counter, one which emphasizes humans and machines working together, in service to a Lord and Principality, in support of life.”

He pauses to look at the live satellite video feed his man in the front passenger seat draws his attention to, before turning back to the Lord Commander and von Mises. “The requisite Responsibles oriented bureaucrats, aristocrats and oligarchs, are rather in exceedingly short supply. And we’ve little to no time in which to develop them.”

“There has to be weaknesses, options?” Bertrand asks. Looking Early in the eyes as he turns to the slightly older man, Harrison.

“Perhaps. There are three great weaknesses. The machine can be turned off. The polarization of wealth and power means even a small number of defectors can derail all. The warring factions being too close to parity, as they presently are, can easily lead to their own fights weakening or outright destroying one another and self. All of this gives us some time, given all that we’ve already in place and what is now fully maturing and moving into position. But, as evidenced by these actions today. Everything is now accelerating and it only takes one mistep by one underlying for the world to devolve into blood and fire and quite possibly even a nuclear end.”

“Good. That’s about the best we can see for now.” Harrison’s abrupt yet in agreement response to the Earl’s performance. Recognition of the truth of it evident in Bertrand’s changing posture and demeanor. As he nods to Harrison slowly, in small movements, letting the Lord Commander know he’s both heard and understood. Both aristocrats have synchronized, as they must, for the work ahead, as the plan hard shifts phases and accelerates. Those behind this attempt will not and can not allow their failure here to stand. Time for The Order to go onto wartime footing, yet again. Violence, much violence and death, follows. Such is the inescapable ancient way of these things. So be it.

As Responsibles have time on their side, or believe they do, even if not true in the current state of the War, tactics must rapidly develop, test, employ and evolve, this at a pace Responsibles cannot hope to keep up with.

The Eternal War | Doctrine | Time | Resentfuls’ Principle

“How do you continue to do this? How do you live in such a world?” Princess Annabelle, safely, for a time, ensconced in the isolated guest house of the Napa vineyard they’d been secretly ushered to. After coming ashore north of Stinson Beach, during a short raging gun battle between Carl’s men and those tracking them. It seemed both only hours and a lifetime ago. Though that night and its events had been two nights ago.

“We’re built for it.” Prince Bobby responds, with a shrug. There’d been no time to grieve, to take the full measure of the events since the assault on the San Francisco sanctuary. There isn’t much time now, as they’ll need move again, soon. Freedom of movement being the only true security when hunted by the highly proficient, backed with all the latest technologies and resources.

“That can’t be enough.” Princess Annabelle, the fullness of it hitting her increasingly over the past day and a half. The lives she’d taken without a thought. The lives lost. Just so she could escape. The death of Carl and his men in a sleepy little town in Marin County. All to provide cover for her escape.

“It’s so dark.” The Princess, her head in her hands, as the truth of who and what she is, the world men like these live in, to keep her and those like her safe. As it all crashes over and through her.

“If someone doesn’t stand to the darkness, doesn’t embrace it within themselves. Then the darkness bleeds everywhere into the world.” Bobby, his eyes locked onto Annabelle’s, firm, cold and ruthless. But with the compassion of a mentor. This isn't the time to show weakness, to allow her to slide into grief, to wallow in pity and shock. There'll be time to process the pain later. But for now, she must learn to sublimate it, must be ready to move and to kill again if required.

The lessons at the Sanctuary, and those whispered in the escape, those over the past two, exhausted, days here on the vineyard. They show in her stiffening, her hands dropping away from her head, her shoulders pushing back to sit up straight. There’s fire in this Royal, to be certain. Bobby, smiling lightly, admires.

“Just beyond the faint glimmer of light. There is only darkness. Darkness seeking always to extinguish the fragile light of humanity. Were it not for those few who enter into darkness to fight the evil dwells always there. Those who forever after carry darkness in their soul. Humanity would fall. To the ruin and enslavement of all.” Annabelle recites the first part of the meditation.

Until the events of the last three days, this had only been a mantra, a meditation, of The Order. Yet another of the many such phrases meant to impart hard-earned wisdoms. Now Annabelle begins to understand, to feel the truth of it in her bones. As if some ancient knowledge trapped within her very old genes is expressing itself. Genetic memories only released when similar forces are at play in her life as were in the life of the ancestor who first attained such knowledge and wisdom, painfully.

“I shall bear the weight of darkness all the days of my life. That others may know the light of humanity.” Prince Dlamini finishes the meditation. Nodding his head approvingly as Annabelle steels herself, puts the pain of innocence lost away in an inner compartment. To be brought out later, properly dealt with, in the right time and place.

“How does he do it? How does he continue unfazed?” Annabelle asks her mentor, Prince Dlamini, Bobby. As she looks out the window to where the man who’d been more a father to her than she’d ever known, is sitting in a slat wooden chair, his gaze out across the vineyard as it rolls down the hill away from the guesthouse.

After spending a day below decks on the sailing yacht they’d escaped from San Francisco on. A day leisurely sailing offshore as if enjoying a several days jaunt. They’d come in on the second night, very early in the morning, actually. Under the cover of darkness and a fog rolling in. The three of them on an inflatable piloted by one of the crew from the ship. Just after making it to shore, north of Stinson Beach, up near RCA beach. They could hear the sounds of sporadic gunfire in the distance, to the east and slightly south of them, closer to Bolinas Lagoon. Gunfire coming closer to them as they moved inland, towards Highway One and Woodville.

The three of them, under thermal masking sheets pulled from their packs. Watched from the side of the road as Carl and his team came into view, moving north on HWY 1, going past them into Woodville, trailed by two SUVs. The lead of which being where the gunfire was coming from. The passenger in the front seat shooting at the trail vehicle in Carl’s two car group. They watched, unable to do anything as a man emerged from the sunroof of the lead SUV, with an RPG, as he fired it at the lead vehicle in Carl’s group.

The blast lifted the back of the lead car from the road, slamming it into a light post. Bringing it to a complete stop. The second car skidding sideways to miss the first. Taking up a blocking position between the now crashed and upside-down vehicle and those in pursuit. What followed next was a short-lived wild west gunfight in the outskirts of sleepy Woodville. A gunfight ended with Carl and his entire team dead, blown apart by further RPG fire. The final of three RPG blasts barely visible to Annabelle as she looks out the back window of the vehicle the three of them had entered, before moving in the opposite direction Carl and his men had gone. Back south on HWY 1. Her pursuers distracted by the fierce but short fight put up by Carl and his men.

It had all been a decoy. Carl and his men sacrificing their lives, dearly. Having taken out more than half of their pursuers, putting up such a fierce fight their attackers, rather than seeking to take the Princess alive, had resorted to killing everyone with RPG blasts. While the decoy would hold her pursuers off for a time. They would soon enough cut through the ruse created by the bodies resanguinated after death with blood taken from Bobby, Early and herself. Which explained why her blood had been taken regularly and stored. Something that had piqued her interest for two years. The blood smears would test positive for the right DNA. But no body tissue test would. Nor would other medical records such as dental. Bobby had stated it would delay at best three days.

While getting away early that morning. Turning back to face the front seat, where the Earl was conferring with the driver. Annabelle couldn’t believe the lack of expression on his face, the lack of attention paid to the death of his longtime friend and colleague. Live now, grieve later. While Carl had always been aloof, more a wolf than a man. She knew he’d been fond of her and that he knew she was fond of him. The silent protective uncle. How could the Earl be so disconnected, while her heart and soul were breaking?

The burden of nobility is that we use up and kill the good where and when we must, because we must.

She would learn the following day, safely secured in the remote guesthouse of the vineyard. A vineyard not owned by The Order. But owned by a former Marine Corps veteran had gone through the Population Health program of The Order. Who’d then been backed indirectly, untraceably, by The Order, with grants to buy and operate the vineyard, as a non-profit. To provide traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress treatments and recovery for veterans and first responders. As well as to provide temporary Sanctuary and other resources and capabilities, should such be necessary. She’d learned the Earl had argued against the course of action taken.

When in a running battle, whether gunfighting, in a lull, or in movement between gunfights. One does not dictate the battlespace. One allows and follows the flow as dictated by the current conditions and environment and by the current capacities and actions of the enemy and self. A passage in one of her studies comes to the fore, as she looks out to the Earl sitting alone.

Turns out her pursuers had planned and prepared quite well for an attempt to escape from San Francisco either across the two bridges, through the routes south on the peninsula or out to sea. With, out to sea, being the most likely. In the end, Carl’s plan to sacrifice himself and his knights had been the only viable option available.

These men had all died willingly, with thought and foreplaning. For her. That she might go on and her children might rule. The very thought of it she can’t even approach now, still under pursuit as they are. For she knows. When she stops to confront this reality, that her very existence means good men and women will die. Well, if and when she can stop to think of that. It’ll certainly crush her very soul. For a time only! AnnaBelle thinks to herself. As she shunts off the emotions. Trying to be more like these stoic men, these knights, these unrecognized Princes in the world.

I must live worthy! A mantra she’d devised herself, yesterday, to retain sanity, to remain capable of whatever is asked and demanded of her.

On the whole, she’s rather surprised in herself. In her ability to manage the pain, the darkness of the last two plus days. The loss of life. Those she’d taken. Those had fallen around her. Those who’d fallen for her. A switch, most certainly. Carl, in a conversation after morning hand-to-hand training, had said this to her. That there’s a switch in warriors. An aggression switch allows one to dial up intensity, energetic potential. Cross that potential and the switch flips to violence of action.

“How do you go from zero to one hundred so quickly?” This, a question, from one of the last conversations she’d had with Carl.

“I don’t” His quiet reply. His eyes looking deeply into her. Letting her find the meaning in his statement, on her own.

“You’re never at zero.” AnnaBelle, thinking out loud, answering Carl’s unspoken question. His only response being an ever so brief and small nod of his head.

“But how ever does one hide always on aggression?” This question brings out one of the few actual smiles Carl ever demonstrated in her presence. A smile of appreciation.

“We don’t.” Carl further prompts with brief words and look. Forcing the princess to think more.

“A body in motion stays in motion.” AnnaBelle posits before continuing. Not looking to Carl for approval. She’d learned long before she’d not get it. Not that he wouldn’t approve. He’d just never let his approval show.

She’d looked to Carl then, to see if she could see what state of aggression, he was currently in. It was there, in the posture, tightness around the mouth and eyes. A sort of vibration about him. Strange she’d never really seen it before, not this obviously. She’d always thought it was just intensity. Carl being yet another of the serious people had come with the Earl. Thinking about it on the vineyard, about her intense guardian, more like a big brother or uncle, now dead. It surprises her how much he’d showed her, taught her without teaching her. Simply by being what he was.

In what at the time, long after her zero to one hundred questions, seemed an oddly placed caution. Carl had told her the only way to never be or become a slave was to maintain a constant state of aggression. Now she understands. Here on the vineyard, the shock of it all rewiring her in ways she knows she’d never be able to clarify nor even fully know for some time yet. If even, then. One must always, in all things and at all times, maintain a state of active aggression. Dialing this aggression up or down in proportion to the threat level at any given time in any given place and situation.

Everything which had transpired during and since the events in the hallway in the San Francisco sanctuary finally brought his lesson on aggression home. To go from zero to anything can, and most often will, get one killed. The energy necessary to move a stationary object being vastly greater than to accelerate an object already in motion. This being true of violence no less than anything else.

Slaves! Women, in whom aggression is so often perceived as insanity. Men, in whom aggression is so often perceived as a threat. How many had enslaved themselves by suppressing and denying aggression in themselves. Incorrectly believing that if it was absolutely essential, they’d be able to go from zero to whatever level of response necessary to save them. But it doesn’t work that way. Instead, all they are doing is relegating themselves to slavery. The only way in which to attain and remain in this state being the denial of reality. Denial of the fact there are ever-present threats in even our little part of the world.

Crazy, but that old trope is not a trope. When shit’s going down, the ones with aggression already turned on are the only ones speaking truth, the only ones who can and do move, forward toward the threat. Astoundingly she’d seen these men reach a state of utter calm only when in a very real fight. Something about the way in which they’re wired. A wiring she seems to have herself. But what’s the balance, what level of intensity and aggression must be maintained at all times? It has to be more than twenty five percent always, fifty percent depending on the situation.

How does one exist in modern polite society with any degree of aggression turned on? Something deeper in Carl’s message is coming to the fore now. Disquiet of the strong, the aggressive, is either a sign of a slave or a slaver. The former self-enslaved and made uncomfortable by your not having enslaved yourself, while also fearing you as a slaver. The latter never comfortable meeting a human being has not self-enslaved while also fearing being taken down by those few true anti-slavers among us.

As she sits and watches the Earl outside the window, beginning to stir in the wood slat chair, overlooking this part of the vineyard. As he stands, stretches and begins to move back towards her inside. AnnaBelle seeks to understand where all of this comes from. How did this self-enslaving, denial of one’s own aggression, come to be so prevalent in the modern world?

“How do you believe it all began? More importantly, why?” The Earl, always the teacher, the mentor, the father figure, known and trusted entity, and once and future Senior Knight Commander to a Royal and great houses. Responds, to the question she drops upon him shortly after he’s reentered from the slatted chair overlooking the vine covered hills.

“I believe women began taking overt control after the industrial slaughter of WWI, increasingly since WWII.”

“Were they not in control before?” The Earl asks. No expression of the loss of his close compatriot and friend, nor of the exhaustion of the last few days showing anywhere but as a mere slight deepening of the wrinkles at the corners of his azure colored eyes.

“Always. Just not overtly, nor so directly and directly impactfully.”

“And?”

“I think men saw something about the true nature of the World of Man in WWI, then again in WWII. Something they didn’t expect to find. A thing shook the very foundations of the World of Man. Something only full industrial warfare could show.”

“Which is?” He may not show the strain upon his aging self. But anyone who knows him, as she’s come to over the past years of their daily engagements, can see how tired the Earl is in the lack of his normal supportive expressions.

“How deep into hell men will go, remain and how much darkness they will carry for life if not restrained by power other than force of arms.”

“That force being the World of Woman?”

“Yes. But women got it wrong, are still getting it wrong. Women sought to and are still seeking to geld men to prevent future slaughter, to remove darkness. They’re doing this by making sex ever more available from low status women, believing wrongly competition for sex is what drives men and that this drive is the root cause of darkness in the world.”

“It isn’t?”

“Not in healthy men. In weak and predatory men, yes. In strong and healthy men, no.”

“What drives men, if it isn’t constant access to sex? The healthy ones.”

“I think what drives men is fatherhood. It seems everything a healthy man does is to earn and retain the right and capacity to be a father.” The Earl looks to her, his exhaustion, for the briefest moment, slipping away in an expression of respect and approval for this young princess in his care. A princess who, while on the run, is yet thinking through the complex and difficult things. “I think men, fathers, they earn this right by fighting the darkness emerges inevitably from unchecked weakness, cowardice, fear, envy, greed, malevolence, all the baser low status traits. Fight it within themselves, always, while standing against it, with strength and violence if they must, in their families, communities and when unavoidable, in the broader world.”

“So, making sex readily available, hypersexualizing low status women, has not reduced darkness in the world, has not removed malevolence and violence?”

“No, quite the opposite. It’s only ensured darkness, usury and abuse, are everywhere unrestrained, right out in the open.” AnnaBelle frowns with genuine anger as the realization comes across her mind. “Now there are weak men and predators everywhere, destroying healthy women and children, shielded and supported by powerful unhealthy women.”

“Remove a father’s protection, the constant capacity in, willingness to and actual enactment of violence against any threat to wife and children, and society fails.” Early, Lord Rothbury, exhausted, prepared for a fight at any moment, preparing for their imminent move from the seclusion of the Northern California vineyard, nods in recognition of Her Highness’ thinking and awareness.

“Man, as a father or one earning the right to be a father, is to be and confront darkness in order to protect relationships. Woman is to maintain these relationships while preventing the darkness her man confronts and takes into himself from overwhelming him. It’s in this balance, maintained and acted out billions of times a day by tens of millions of couples, that the slave mind is denied and our people are sustained.”

“Go on.”

“If a woman fails in this, to allow her man to be and confront darkness, to protect relationships. Then darkness spreads everywhere, into everything, till there’s only darkness. Women have to accept some part of darkness in their own lives to know darkness is real. To understand what men are dealing with always on behalf of women and children. To recognize the darkness in other women and how it’s shaping the world.”

The sheer thought of it, not the truth of it, but what that truth means, now slams into her. “He knew he was going to die for me. Do his children know who their father was?” Now the tears she’s been holding back for days begin to flow, as drops building into a river. “Do they know he earned the right to be a father over and over again, till the very end of his life. A life he gave still earning that right?” The pain of it doubles AnnaBelle over in great wracking tears and crying.

Before she can collapse. Early closes the short distance between he and his ward. Taking her into his arms. Holding her so she doesn’t fall onto the floor in pain and grief. AnnaBelle can’t see it, as she turns and buries her face in his chest, her arms and hands between them, clenched at her own chest. There may not be the wracking cries coming from his steadfast body, but there are tears in his own eyes he can no longer prevent from forming and falling onto her hair. Tears at the loss of one of the greatest men he’d ever known, will ever know, a true warrior and knight, a father.

Keeping the tears out of his voice the best he can, “A man doesn’t do what he does for recognition. He does it for the love of his children and life.”

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