Special Ops, Espionage and Intelligence
Special Ops was an underground offense, code-named Rune. Hostage rescue, guerilla warfare, and specialized search and seizure missions were their specialty. They often went ahead and implanted heat and motion sensors throughout enemy terrain, and conducted extensive surveillance before I gave the go-ahead to proceed in any given mission.
Once inside enemy territory, Rune was required to comandeer all forms of communication, obliterate any obstruction by use of demolitions, and secure a pocket of terrain for the land invasion. Rune was a devastating force. They were clear and concise in their objective. Of course, I do not have all the information regarding their missions, but I know we celebrated many successes and we always seemed to have the upper hand.
In retrospect, I realize that years before the First Invasion, Piers began gathering and training troops. He never really called it that then, of course. He taught most everyone self-defense tricks, and how to improvise munitions. I did not fully understand why at the time, but he also specially trained seven men as spies. I thought it was some type of delusion, this war he spoke of. Little did I know...
For those trained in the art of espionage, it was imperative that all spies learn Yesuan; not just the vocabulary and both alphabets, but the tone, syntax, even idioms. They needed to be fluent in all aspects, such as culture, society quirks, customs...there must be no conceivable way that the enemy could guess they were not native. The majority of this aspect of training was an immersion program: he sequestered the seven in a bunker near the outskirts of the forest so as to be forced to learn every aspect of a Yesuan life. Collectively, they were known as Unit Blue, or "Aquilin" in Yesuan. By the time Piers began to notice the first signs of an impending invasion, he sent out Rune and Aquilin moved forward to infiltrate.
Those in Aquilin were known only by their code-names, which were numbers one through seven in Yesuan. In the beginning, no one paid much attention to each other inside, and mostly worried about oneself. Of course, there were the few main ones inside, most of whom have gone quiet, or missing. It is for this reason that no one is exactly sure who was involved in the more secretive teams, such as Rune and Aquilin. By process of elimination I can narrow it down to a few dozen possibilities, but I was so deeply concerned with my little ones, that until Piers' disappearance I truly had no idea who all was in the Collective. They were not my responsibility. In hindsight, I wish I had paid closer attention.
I never thought to ask for more details before; I am sure several members of the Collective who are now gone would have a better and more complete recollection. Even those still with us, but present then could have definitely helped with information in those days. Rhiannon, for instance, was very close to Piers and used to speak Yesuan rather well. I wonder what we could have learned from her then.
I digress.
Aquilin and Rune were cloistered units, in effect; Piers knew we had been infiltrated, possibly even before his famed pre-emptive strike, but he did not know by whom. Therefore, the Aquilin and Rune rarely, if ever, socialized with anyone in the Collective. This protected their identity and also made it nearly impossible to let any infiltrator near them.
Our intelligence team is known as Stealth Alliance. Not an incredibly subtle name, in my opinion, but I did not name them. For obvious reasons I cannot divulge anything else regarding these units.
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