When Chloe brought a descendant of the Napoleon family to France, she painted a large target on him. Well, to be fair, he helped paint it by calling for peace and order in France. The Islamic Brotherhoods did not take well to that and tried to kill him. They tried to do it many times, but he had good security. And he had Chloe. Or Chloe had him. History is somewhat vague on who had whom at the time. It is not at all vague on the matter of how many Brotherhood fighters died trying to kill Napoleon. Or how many of them died at Chloe’s hands. They basically dared the Brotherhoods to come kill them, and the Brotherhoods did not disappoint them. Casualty rates in their more aggressive cells hit catastrophic levels in a matter of weeks, and the Brotherhood’s ability to openly operate inside France soon began to wane.
Christian Mack served in the United States Marine Corps as a Master Gunnery Sergeant before Contact. He retired and became an actor after Contact. He soon became one of the most famous actors in the entire Terran Solar System, and remained popular and prolific until The War came upon us all. He took on action and romance roles, and played powerful dramatic parts in numerous award-winning films and series, but it was for his character roles that he became a true household name. And his breakthrough role was that of a hard-bitten film noir-style detective hunting down criminals throughout the Solar System. Knight Errant Christian Mack of Knights Errant Investigations was the role of a lifetime and he played it so well that most people forgot his real name entirely. He was simply the guy who played Christian Mack. It was not the name he was born with, but he took it as his own when the time came.
Edwin Case is a real big man, let me tell you. He played Real American Football, lifted weights, wrestled, and did all the other stuff strong young men like to do in school. Then the Peloran Treatments kicked in with their final little oh-so-random gift and he became Ageless. His career and his records went away and he returned home a broken and bitter man. That’s where most biographies of him stop until the day the judge gave him a choice between the Marines and jail time after a particularly impressive bar. Very few biographies get into why he had a choice at all. The answer is both simple and complicated. The simple part is that he was an associate member of Knights Errant Investigations in good standing. Until then. The complicated part is that an associate member of Knights Errant Investigations picked a bar fight with the Marines while drunk as a skunk.
The Islamic Brotherhoods did not react well when Chloe finally appeared in a real, physical form beside the Napoleon she had brought to France. They’d been trying to kill her since they bombed Old Paris, and she’d made herself a major nuisance to them ever since. So when they finally saw her, in public, easy to target, they took the bait. If any of them thought she might be a trap, it wasn’t the ones that went gunning for her. She had numerous robotic bodies operating by then, each one running a copy of her main personality, and some were truly exceptional combatants. She scored an impressive number of Brotherhood kills in the days following her public unveiling in France.
We’ve woken up from our Turkey Comas. We’ve survived Black Friday. Now it is time for Cyber Monday and all the times that follow it. We’ve entered the Christmas Season, powered by Target, Walmart, and Toys R Us. Oh. Wait. Anyways, this is the greatest shopping season of the year, powered by the idea of giving gifts to other people.
I ask that you consider what you give and who you give it to. Do they really want it? Or would something else work just as well? Can you really give it? Don’t go into debt for a gift. Be careful what you give. But also try to give something that means something. Yes, it isn’t always easy to find the right gift. But don’t worry. You still have a month to figure it out if you haven’t already.
Tick Tock.
Merry Christmas Season.
Forge of War on Amazon
Angel Flight on Amazon
Angel Strike on Amazon
Angel War on Amazon
Wolfenheim Rising on Amazon
Wolfenheim Emergent on Amazon