Fabienne Gschwind - The Fallen Heroine

The boss conscientiously noted our progress, offering praise or reprimanding us. So I finally learned how long Gabin and Emily had served in Tartelette's unit.

In Gabin's case, it was just two years. He had asked to be transferred after he was promoted full sailsman, because he admired her unit so much. Emily, who always seemed so experienced, had only been with the commander for a year. Before that, she had served in ReS Île de Ré for four years before it was disbanded for money reasons. Therefore, Emily knew her way around.

Basically, it meant that the many fallen sailors whose names I had already heard had been killed within the last two years. A deeply saddening thought.

Then, finally, a party night: all the ReS units from the region got together once a quarter to party.

I didn't have a vehicle. Neither did Tamara nor Gabin. We borrowed a police car and the three of us went. Emily and Thibault held down the fort.

The party was good. Lots of nice people and all had the same problems, I was given lots of good tips to deal with the pressure and nightmares. Many had been self diagnosed with post traumatic disorders. But because they all had to go through the trauma day in and day out, the ReS doctors only classified it as "mild depression" and they gave them antidepressants.

In fact, the use of the many anti-anxiety and otherwise happy-making drugs was virtually standard condition. Gabin was an expert in the field and was always up to date on the latest research. Tamara had of course made sure that good food and good wine were available and we experienced a great evening.

In the meantime, headquarters had given me some vacation days. Tamara instructed me to use them up: "ReS headquarter is very creative at making vacation days disappear...and you've really earned a few days off."

I called my brother, who had time and promised to visit me in the next few days. After lunch I went to the Tourist Office for advice on what I could do with him. Since I had a half day free, I took part in a real city tour, i.e. with a guide and not just with the media glasses. So I could at least give a few facts about La Rochelle. Then I hurried back to work. Where I spend time watching and training all the new content which Tamara provided us. I must admit that I found all this "special unit knowledge” so exciting that I still put in well into the evening without noticing how the time was tracking. In the meantime I had been studying the latest learning techniques. The modern active learning was much more exhausting than just passively watching videos, but even days later all the knowledge remained firmly anchored in my head, so it was worth the effort.

In the morning I visited Marjolaine to find out what was wrong with my hazard pay. The form I had signed at Tartelette the day before yesterday had been declared invalid because my signature was supposedly a millimeter too far out of the box and could no longer be read by the computer. I was instructed to use the new forms and send them back with a verified digital signature.

"Yep. The ReS Administration comes up with something every two weeks to pay wages and hazard pay as late as possible. Their whole policy is based on sailors dying before they even get paid. It's a wonder they don't decide to only pay wages annually. I'm going to get to work and search the depths of the intranet for this new form, and I'm also going to put a little pressure on them to get this processed immediately and not next month..."

Finally, Marjolaine found it. After slogging through five pages of red tape, I was able to put my digital signature.

Two hours later, I was a rich man and could hardly wait for my brother to arrive.

"Shall we take another selfie, with Fort Boyard in the background?", my brother asked and I stood next to him, where he immediately took a 2D photo with his retro camera. My brother was a big fan of historical digital photography and had an old screen computer to process the data exactly as it had been done a century ago.

I was on vacation, but had to be available should a special mission be called. But I thought that was fair enough and actually I couldn't wait to test out my new knowledge in a large-scale mission.

We had been together for a few days. I had taken my brother around La Rochelle, we had surfed the waves on autokite boards. Then I paid for him to take a day trip on horseback because he loved to ride - while I went to work. Today we took a day trip together on a boat and we were headed to Fort Boyard. It's an impressive fort that stands in the middle of the sea near La Rochelle, between the mainland and Île d'Oléron, and has been used as a filming location for television shows since time immemorial.

I was on call and wore the special underwear for combat gear under my clothes. Somehow, I felt it was necessary. When my wrist computer beeped, my feeling was confirmed.

"Mr. Junior Sailor, this is the watch officer," Thibault jokingly called into the line, "an elite unit mission is coming up, somewhere in the Massif Central. We've locked on to your ship and will pick you up there. The captain has already been informed."

My brother seemed pleased. "That'll make a cool picture when your Decacopter picks you up from the ship right away. Don't worry about me, I was going back this evening anyway," he said, patting me on the back.

The captain instructed me to wait on the upper deck while I made sure my brother was allowed to stand on the bridge to take a few pictures.

Finally, our decacopter flew in and a rope with a harness was lowered. I made an effort to tense my body so I didn't look like a sack of potatoes and saluted my brother into the camera, because I knew he would love it. And, of course, because a bunch of other tourists were pointing their various recording devices at me.

Then I was pulled into the booth.

"We should do dramatic performances like this more often. It increases our publicity," Gabin said, closing the door while Emily handed me my battle gear. I was looking forward to an exciting repro hunt. From this I could tell I had already become much more confident.

The mission was about a wolf pack in the Tarn region, the Vallé du Tarn. Everyone was convinced that they were not normal, but trained repros that had escaped from Auvergne. ReS headquarters then organized a massive large-scale operation.

We were stationed in La Malene. The whole region was almost deserted, but La Malene was bustling and people had dressed up in 21st century style. There were some hotels for tourists and old-fashioned canoe rentals were competing for customers.

Of all this, we saw only the empty canoes and the overdimensioned posters and advertising stands. Most of the people had voluntarily evacuated and retreated to their second homes or to relatives. In any case, the backcountry of France was practically uninhabited, with ruined villages or ghost towns everywhere, of which we didn't even know the names anymore... relics of a time long gone.

After gathering weapons and rations, we flew around in search of the wolves. With Tamara and Gabin we formed a trio, while Emily would coordinate the other ReS units. The region was beautiful. So the area of operation stretched from the gorges of the Tarn and Jonte rivers to the Causses. The Causses are these limestone plateaus in the Massif Central. To our chagrin, there are also countless caves there. Since we already had experience, we were sent straight to one.

"...on the neighboring Causse Noir there are two famous cave systems that were visitor magnets until the apocalypse. But neither has been reopened yet, for lack of personnel. That means they could be an ideal loophole if another terrorist is holed up somewhere. The 'Aven Armand' cave even had a funicular ..."