The Theater
0732 EST


"Peace, wake up."

Gregory snorted as he awakened, looking around, seeing Ricky Tarvey looking down at him. "What's going on, Ricky?"

"Odessa's been talking with Lobo since dawn. Think they've been cooking up an op together."

"What sort of op?"

"The kind where we're probably going to need to cover you while you commune with the computers."

Gregory smiled as he got up from the sleeping bag. "Another wonderful morning in D.C., then. Let's grab some coffee and see what they're thinking about."

The two men made their way over to the open air commissary set up above Odessa's quarters, grabbing chicory coffee and some slightly doughy apple fritters. Breakfast in hand, they came down to the folding table Odessa had set up for the Theater's operations center. Odessa and Ryckmen were poring over a map of the city, Annika Bundmeister leaning against the wall as she listened. "Morning, boys," Odessa said, glancing up briefly. "We've been thinking about ways to stack the deck in our favor. We've got local comms over the city, ISAC's up and running in town. But we can do better than that. So we're going for a deep strike to re-establish the network across the country."

"In other words, we're going to be bad and nationwide once more," grinned Ryckmen.

"How do we plan to do pull that off?" Gregory asked, washing down a bite of fritter with his coffee.

"The NOA Space Admin building," replied Bundmeister. "That facility has satellite uplinks we can utilize to hit SHD orbital assets which are currently offline to agents in the field. We realign the dishes, ISAC will take care of the rest."

Gregory shook his head. "Won't work. Right now, our comms coming through ViewPoint are using VHF channels. We'd need a UHF communications module, either custom built or scavenged from an existing unlaunched satellite, to be able to reach the SHD satellites in orbit."

"Good to know you have a firm grip on the logistical realities," Bundmeister said with a wintry smile. "Luckily for us, there was a Quicksilver comm satellite body being assembled at the site. We cannibalize that module and the Division will be back in business."

Tarvey looked over the map, frowning in thought. "Awful deep in Ridgeway's backyard," he said slowly. "Can we hold it once we get it?"

Odessa gave Tarvey a firm nod. "Hell, yeah. I've got two strike teams put together, and Kelso's going to be lending her assistance. There's a solar farm right here," she said, pointing to a spot near 4th Street and Madison Drive. "You four, along with Kelso and the teams, will grab the farm first. Once that's secure, one team will stay behind to hold the farm while the rest of you make your way down to the Space Admin building. Kelso will take the remaining team to hold what we think is one of the True Sons' forward bases. It's in a hotel on C Street just east of 6th. It's a little risky, but if we can pull it off, we'll have cut Ridgeway off from his FOBs further west, as well as take pressure off the Castle."

"The Castle?" asked Gregory. "What's that?"

Sighing heavily, Odessa looked at him. "It's a settlement being run by a defector from the True Sons. Guy named Mike Snow. He was an E-5 in the Virginia National Guard. I think he genuinely believed Ridgeway was going to try and keep things together. But something must have soured him on the man. Even then, he's never been real interested in fighting Ridgeway. Kept paying tribute to Ridgeway, and it hasn't done a damn bit of good. Hell, his old buddies still with the True Sons have flat out told him Ridgeway's just waiting till he feels like squashing Snow. But still he persists. He's got guts, I'll give him that, but not a whole lot of sense. It's going to get him and everybody in that place killed one of these days." Shaking her head, Odessa tapped the map. "The immediate concern is the Space Admin building. I've got just the team to make sure we keep it."

"Who'd you have in mind?" Ryckmen asked, sipping his own coffee.

"Some guys from the local motorcycle club. Not outlaws, but certainly have the right image and attitude for biker trash. Told them they could make the hotel their new clubhouse so long as they keep an eye on the Admin building for us. And honestly," finished Odessa with a predatory smile, "the thought of True Sons getting beaten like red headed stepchildren with motorcycle chains doesn't break my heart one tiny bit."


* * *

National Office of Aeronautics Space Administration Building, Southwest Sector
1610 EST


"Funny how the biker trash wasn't tempted to make a pass at Kelso," remarked Bundmeister as the four agents climbed the stairs to the third floor of the Admin Building.

"Certainly not after we took the farm," Ryckmen said agreeably. "That one guy, Bear, was certainly glancing at her on the way down there, but he looked like he was afraid she'd snap shoot him if he said anything untoward."

Gregory chuckled at the image. Bear stood six foot five, weighed somewhere in the neighborhood of three hundred pounds, and gave off the air of a particularly ill tempered Rottweiler. Yet his behavior around Alani Kelso had been nothing short of solicitous after the capture of the solar farm. Kelso wasn't exactly petite, but her actions at the farm had made it clear to all involved she wasn't to be trifled with. If the plus sized biker was smitten, he knew he would need to find a very nice bouquet of flowers.

"Control center up ahead, Peace," reported Tarvey. "Ready to do your thing?"

"Whether I am or not, it's game time." Gregory made his way into the control center and over to a command console. A few entries had him shaking his head. "Of course. It'd be too easy otherwise."

"What's wrong?" asked Ryckmen. So far, the True Sons guards they'd gone through to reach the controls hadn't been up to their level, but he wasn't willing to accept the idea they would all be creampuffs.

"They cut the control links from the dish assemblies to the main command console. We can't realign the dishes from in here. We'll have to go out and align them one by one manually."

Bundmeister looked out into the courtyard where the three dishes stood out. "Will that take a lot of time?"

"Depends on how close they are right now to the direction we need them and how their drives are geared. It could be ten minutes. It could be half an hour or more."

"Then we better get to work," Ryckmen grunted. "Ricky, with me. Bunny, on Peace. I don't want his concentration interrupted for any reason." Ryckmen and Tarvey went through a pair of doors to a landing overlooking one of the dishes while Gregory and Bundmeister went through the other doors, heading down to the dish itself. Kneeling down, Gregory pulled out a hardened laptop and quickly established a physical connection to the dish.

"Starting alignment now. ISAC is feeding me the azimuth."

A shout echoed in the courtyard, followed immediately by a shotgun blast. "How long, Pax?" asked Bundmeister as she crouched behind an HVAC conduit.

"Eight minutes for this first one," Gregory murmured as he watched the progress. "This is about a ton and a half of metal on a worm gear setup. It's not like a home satellite dish."

Ryckmen carefully stroked the trigger, sending rounds across the courtyard to a pair of True Sons armed with shotguns. One of them had been trying to set up what looked like an automated turret. "Ricky, do the True Sons have access to SHD tech?" he asked as he scanned for more targets.

"Not that I'm aware of." Tarvey popped up, three round bursts from his suppressed MP5 ripping through a grenadier. "But then again, I'd be surprised if they hadn't recovered at least some of it and figured out a way to reverse engineer it. Nobody ever promised the bad guys would be stupid all the time about everything."

"Sad but true."

Minutes seemed to pass with agonizing slowness as the dish slowly came into alignment. A soft chime rang in Gregory's earpiece when it finally reached the end. "Lobo, Ricky, we're heading up to you," he said as he quickly unhooked cables and tucked the laptop under his arm, his other hand carrying his sidearm. Bundmeister moved behind Gregory, two paces behind to make sure his flanks were covered. Moving up the stairs, Gregory made it to the second dish and plugged in. "Six minutes."

More True Sons entered the courtyard from the side nearest the control room, shouting and tossing grenades to try and dislodge both Ryckmen and Tarvey from their positions. Ryckmen remained calm, drilling bullets into opponents with clinical precision, while Tarvey either kept them from trying to rush the upper walkway or picked off threats coming from Ryckmen's blind side. The dish crept into alignment with a faint metallic bang at the end, prompting Gregory to pull the cables and make his way along the back stairs to the third dish.

"Ohhh, this is gonna suck," groaned Gregory as he looked at the screen. "Seventeen minutes, guys."

"Least it's not a complete surprise, Peace," Ryckmen said far more philosophically than he felt as he drew his sidearm, double tapping a pair of True Sons who'd attempted to sneak up on him. "Ammo check."

"I've got two full mags left for the MP5. Ten rifle mags in my bag. Twenty shot shells for the sawed-off." Tarvey glanced at the magazine currently loaded in the MP5. "Fifteen rounds left in this one."

"Four speedloaders left for me," reported Bundmeister. "Still topped off for my AK, but I'll need a second to shift the load a little."

"I'm still good for ammo right now, but that may change," Gregory said as he watched the dish slowly swing into position.

The minutes crawled by, yet no further True Sons attempted to stop them. When the dish finally came to a stop, ISAC chirped into the ringing silence. "Dish alignment complete."

"Now we just need the UHF module." Gregory made his way towards the exit. "I'd really like for things to go more smoothly getting that than what we had to do here."

"Think that might be right up there with oceanfront property in Arizona, Peace," said Tarvey as he moved through the doors. "Sure as hell, they figured fighting us out here was a losing prospect. So they're going to regroup and try to stop us from getting the transmitter. Even if they don't know what we're after, they're going to keep throwing bodies at us till we stop or they drop."

The team moved down the corridors and into a large assembly bay. "There she is. Quicksilver-182," said Bundmeister, a faintly bitter note in her voice. "Feels wrong having an odd number of a satellite series up in orbit."

"It's a prime number, Bunny," Gregory said with a small smile. "That makes it a little more natural, doesn't it?"

"Always looking on the sunny side." Bundmeister went over to a console and entered in a series of commands, putting the body on to a rail system leading out of the assembly bay. "We're not going to haul this thing by ourselves. The transmitter itself is pretty heavy and it's not worth risking our dropping it even once. We'll send this over to the R&D section. From there, we can hook the transmitter up to the dishes and get things up and running again."

"Did you work here previously?" asked Ryckmen curiously.

"Not as such. I was temporarily detached from Pararescue to serve as VIP protection for a two star doing an inspection and audit. Joint Air Force-NRO project." Bundmeister shrugged as she headed towards the exit. "Nothing really to worry about now."

Making their way through a short corridor, the team came to the R&D section. A heavy sliding steel door blocked their progress. "Almost done here, guys," Ryckmen growled, the MDR socketed into his shoulder. "Something moves, shoot it. Peace, open us up." Gregory nodded and activated the door, then quickly brought the M249 to battery. Ryckmen got the first shots off, putting rounds through two True Sons nearest the door. Tarvey slid down, then shifted, loosing three round bursts to pin a grenadier in place underneath a raised platform while the others moved in. Bundmeister slipped down a short flight of stairs behind a pallet of small electronics containers, then made her under the platform, taking the grenadier with a single round from the shotgun.

"Peace, console's in the back," said Bundmeister as she made her way forward, ensuring the right hand platforms were clear. "ISAC should be able to give you final instructions to get the transmitter into position."

Gregory hustled over to the console, ISAC clicking softly with increasing frequency the closer he got to it. Dropping into a crouch, he began typing commands as ISAC whispered them in his ear. With the last command, Gregory tapped the Enter key on the keyboard and grinned. "Got it!"

The lights in the R&D section cut out completely.

"The hell?" asked Tarvey. "Paxton, did you blow a fuse or something?!"

"Couldn't have been me. I wasn't touching power systems at all, and the rail from the assembly was going just fine. Emergency power should kick in here in a second."

A thunderous explosion came from the top level of the R&D section, an observation gallery probably used by VIPs back in the old days. Red emergency lights came on almost immediately, the robotic arm holding the transmitter module beginning to slowly descend. Through the flames, the Division agents made out a bulky man-shaped form. Ryckmen recognized the outline as that of a man in an EOD protective suit.

"Peace, clear out! Don't let him get a bead on that transmitter!" he snapped as he brought the SVD to his shoulder, sending two rounds up at the new threat, hoping it would at least distract them. As the True Son heavy grenadier turned, Ryckmen shifted out of the way. MGL-140, he thought as he heard the weapon cough. Forty millimeter grenades, five meter hard kill radius. Knew this was going too smoothly. He felt the concussion and a burst of heat behind him as the grenade reached his previous position.

Tarvey swapped over to his rifle while Bundmeister brought out her AK, both of them opening fire on the man. An EOD suit, under normal circumstances, was made to survive comparatively small explosions. Grenades, mortar rounds, pipe bombs, a blast suit could take everything from the heat to the pressure wave to the shrapnel and keep the wearer alive at least half the time. Which made the prospect of shooting their way through the suit unenviable. They could eventually cut through the rind of the suit. It was the "eventually" that made it such a problem.

Gregory had gotten out of the way, going to the opposite side of the room from his teammates to try and catch the grenadier in a crossfire. The M249 snarled as Gregory held the trigger down, hoping to hasten the destruction of the armor. As the grenadier turned to bring the grenade launcher to bear on Tarvey, a few of Gregory's rounds tore through the padded ammo box situated on the man's back. The grenades inside went off sympathetically, propelling the grenadier off the walkway at the top of the room and down forty feet to the R&D section's floor, his helmet skating off from the impact. The True Son lifted his head, seeing the muzzle of Bundmeister's AK for half a heartbeat before she fired half a dozen rounds into his skull.

"Who was he?" Tarvey asked as he scanned for other targets.

Bundmeister went over and flipped the smoking corpse over on to his ruined back, then dug out a set of dog tags. "Steve Quiroz, master sergeant, US Army. Not Guard."

Shaking a little, Gregory went back over to the console as the robotic arm gently set the transmitter down. He took a few minutes to wire the transmitter in, then entered a few final commands. "And that's all she wrote, folks. The Division is back online nationwide."

"For now," Ryckmen growled. "Let's just hope the True Sons don't get any bright ideas about trying to grab this place back."

* * *

The Castle, East Mall Sector
1643 EST


"I'm not playing, Mike," Kelso growled. "You have got to stop screwing around with Ridgeway and his goons."

Mike Snow sighed heavily as he looked back at Kelso, his dark hair well past Ranger regulation length. "I'm not screwing around. Ridgeway knows he can't quite take us and he can't afford to get rid of us. We're the biggest source of tomatoes for him and the True Sons right now. It's more trouble than he's willing to deal with."

Kelso gave him her best glare. "And what about the others? You used to run with these bastards, Mike. Would you say they've all got their heads screwed on straight at this point in time?"

"Compared to you and me, no," Snow admitted. "Compared to Ridgeway, yeah, actually. He has them so completely bullied, they won't hit the latrine without filling forms in triplicate for the toilet paper needed."

"And how long is that going to last? Look around you." Kelso swept her hand across the massive courtyard, people of all ages working along the raised beds and open air hydroponic lattices. "How long can you keep paying off Ridgeway with tribute before he gets strong enough to crush you once and for all?"

"Longer than you might think, Kelso." Snow looked over the gardening area, an oddly proprietary smile on his face. "I know you think I'm being an idiot, but look at what we've built here. This place is good. Everybody looks after each other. All the factional crap outside the walls, that's not happening in here. If nothing else," said Snow, his grin turning vaguely feral, "we're all motivated to keep the barbarians at bay."

"They had a phrase for situations exactly like this one. 'If you pay the Danegeld, you will never be rid of the Dane.' And Ridgeway, in this instance, is playing the role of the Dane. As long as you are giving him food and whatever the hell else you're providing, he will never go away. And he will not give a tinker's damn about you, these people, or what you have built." Kelso's fist tightened as she tried to keep from screaming at the former True Son. "He'll kill every last one of you when he figures he's gotten enough out of this place. I know it and you damned well ought to know it."

"I know he's going to try. We all do." Snow shrugged his shoulders a little. "Ridgeway's a monster and a megalomaniac, but he's not a complete idiot. And, being super fair, neither am I. What? You think I've been giving him everything we have? Not even close. He doesn't have a clue about our actual yields, particularly with the grow bays down in the basement. This," he said, pointing to the raised beds, "is all stage dressing. We're growing more food down in the basement with hydroponics and UV lights we've salvaged than we are up here. And Ridgeway hasn't quite put two and two together yet." The feral grin came back in force. "And since he's left Wilson in charge of this zone, I'm reasonably certain he never will. Wilson's twice as vicious as Ridgeway, but only about a quarter as smart, if even that much. Certainly wouldn't think he's much of a military genius given the hamfisted attacks he's launched on us over the last few months."

Kelso's hands dropped to her sides. "You've held out a long time. I can recognize that. I can respect it tremendously. But the situation is changing around here. Believe me, when the blackout hit, I didn't think anything good would come from it. But damn me if we don't have some serious hardcases who've come to town. They're taking the fight to the bad guys, Mike. And they're wrecking scumbags I would have sworn couldn't be taken down even before the blackout. I just want to make sure they can keep up the momentum, and the Castle is almost perfectly placed to make that happen."

Snow frowned, the ball of his thumb rubbing the butt of a combat knife strapped to his right thigh. "Have they talked to Odessa yet? Or Henry Hayes over on the other side of town?"

"Odessa, yes. Only reason they've driven as far as they have is because Odessa has been backing them up between ops. They've been doing good work for the Theater which has also been helping the Division as a whole. Admittedly," Kelso said, her expression twisting a little as she made herself be completely honest, "our particular requirements have pretty much been in sync with the problems Odessa needed solved, but once they get done with their current job, they'll be free to start planning more operations which will keep the True Sons cut down to size."

"If I give them the intelligence and logistical support they need," qualified Snow.

"Yes. Basically, they need the Castle as a base to handle the southeastern portion of the District. And if we can cut off Ridgeway from the western half of the city, pen him in, his units further west can be picked off one by one. Or we can leave them to die on the vine. Personally," said Kelso, baring her teeth in a savage smile, "I'm all for the picking option."