Section 6
03 Sep 2020Zamen Kensata
We don't exist.It was cold at night, without fail. Even during the summer, the night was cold and it was at night when Garen Han usually carried out his orders. Always handed down through an encrypted communique from a commander without rank from an organization that did not exist. Tonight was special. Garen would finally meet Dr. Tukka Rask. She was the senior director for the A.M.C. task force charged with keeping as many citizens within the capital alive as possible.
A meeting she would be completely unaware of until it began. Most likely for her, a meeting she would not want.
"You gonna order?" The food vendor grumbled impatiently at Garen. He was tall and portly, with a not so thick shadow of hair covering the lower half of his round face.
"My apologies." Garen said with a tone to match his words.
He always got like this when all the planning had ended and the execution of his strategy would soon commence. Suddenly an agent incapable of surprise would lose himself in a heavy miasma of thought as millions of unique scenarios played out repeatedly in his mind. This mental state he would slip into would often be more thrilling than the actual completion of the mission. So many possibilities of what could go wrong or right. What would he need to say in order to keep the situation on the proper course? Who would he have to kill?
"Ramen, please." Garen requested. "Terra blend."
The vendor turned and fired up his grill, adding steam to the mist and smoke filled air of the street packed densely with hundreds of Arduan citizens, mobile restaurants, and merchants. Hundreds of personally owned vehicles zoomed overhead with the hum of anti-gravity thrusters. Neon lights lined the tall corporate buildings and skyscrapers illuminating the night-sky.
The city never slept. Within a few hours, Perseverance, Ardua's third ark would begin launch preparations. Unbeknownst to the public, construction on the massive megaship had nearly finished four months before Prime Minister Ford delivered his rousing speech. At the behest of Section Six, Garen's nonexistent organization. The ultimate target was the underground leader of the terrorist organization known as The Shield of Justice, Mar Ris. Apprehending this illusive figure was the goal. The separatist faction needed to be put down before the exodus was in full swing in order to save as many Arduan lives as possible. Most of the populace were unaware of the group's existence, save for the rumors that circulated through the city slums present within the majority of population centers. That was how it always worked. Aspiring warlords and megalomaniacs would leech off of the resentment of the downtrodden and less fortunate, feeding off of their fears and anger towards those who managed to attain a comfortable lot in life. Those with dead-end jobs and low wages who feel they have nowhere to turn were easily manipulated into hating those with food on their tables.
Garen understood their positions all too well, once living on this very street. Of course back then even a simple bowl of noodles would be too expensive for him. Now his finances were near unlimited due to the secrecy and lack of structure of his own organization. MacEllister thought himself a commander; the director of Section Six, yet not even he knew of the sheer all encompassing scale and reach of the organization. Some believed Section Six began thousands of years ago, during the ancient times just before humanity began spreading out amongst the stars. Garen held such a belief. It was his assumption that Section Six was in large part responsible for the discovery of witch space. Governments, politicians, military factions and mega corporations; they had all been infiltrated and subtly steered towards one goal after another, ensuring the human race was ready for the challenges of interstellar travel and colonization. One corporate executive with grand ambitions for a certain planet or exclusive rights to an asteroid field would receive a slight nudge in order to relinquish resources for an operation he knew nothing of from an S6 agent. Or perhaps the executive himself would sometimes be a member. A man such as MacEllister, who thought himself in command of an agency of spies, was in actuality a puppet in control of a useful mirage.
We do not exist. Our elusiveness is our strength. Our ignorance our shield.
Garen remembered the words of his old commander, Yen Tune. A strange title, he thought. Because Yen had never met the one who gave him the position. It should have been the same for Garen but Yen had been sloppy. Or maybe that's what he had wanted Garen to think. Regardless, Garen had accumulated enough wealth and contacts through his own success in order to field his own operations. The overarching goal had always been the relocation of Ardua's citizenry since before Garen was inducted into the organization and when that goal had been attained he would either receive further instructions through encrypted communications or his services would no longer be required and he would be left to his own devices. That is how S6 functioned. Those with talent, ambition, wealth, and intelligence were chosen by random members to further the goals of S6. As well as their own personal objectives, of course. This way there was no figure head, no central conglomerate that could be blamed. There was no secret cabal that one could rally against. That is how Section Six had survived through the millennia and why humanity was rapidly conquering the stars.
This time it was his PDA that shook him from his trance of thought. MacEllister's agents had reported in; Tukka was on the move. Garen slurped the last of his noodles down and left a pile of credits on the vendor's steam grill with a generous tip. The sun would be rising soon and Garen knew Tukka would want to be in orbit near the space construction site for the ark before it was ready to receive its crew. Garen wondered how Dr. Rask's allies planned to hijack the massive cruiser considering its turret defense system had been operational and online for over a month now. But then that is why he decided to commit to the organization. Finding out would be a part of the excitement.