by Keith Sicat

Aguirre wondered if these purple hints of violence on his knuckles matched better with his three-piece pin-stripe suit than his gaudy new belt buckle.  Coming from a brief black-site assignment outside of the Mega Manila Bio-Dome doing what used to be his favorite part of the job, he pondered if age was catching up with him.  

Roughing up dissidents was a young man’s game. Perhaps this was why the buckle was bothering him; the relentless reminder that he’s been downing too many premium off-world lagers.  No wonder he was eager to get his hands dirty again, catch a sniff of his former glory as a field agent.  Fisticuffs were fun!  Getting promoted to his glorified desk job meant the utter drag of wrapping your head around schemers and charlatans of all sorts.  The equations were so much simpler in the field; survive or die.  In this world of etiquette and fancy cutlery, you couldn’t assess whether you were actually surviving or being set up for your final meal.

This brief covert assignment was a welcome distraction. He’d been dealing with a particular thorn in his side: a group of highly organized rebels have been successfully breaking the law. The law: successfully growing and harvesting new rice grains in their deep underground farm terraces safe from prying eyes, and worse, disseminating these crops all over the archipelago.

The higher-ups saw economic Armageddon, plummeting demand from off-world farms will be catastrophic for bottomlines. The politicians funding those enterprises would not be pleased with thinning returns, but his paygrade wasn’t enough for him to be concerned along those terms.  His mandate was more basic.  He needed to maintain the rule of law.  Or at least its illusion. 

No agricultural practice on Earth was worthy of being listed on Moses’ tablet,  but these degenerates were breaking government commandments with their infernal mutated grain.  God only knows what these genetic aberrations can do to the populace?  It’s not just peace and order, this was about public health!  He mulled this as he indignantly bit into his neo-nutribun.

A few months ago, a breakthrough in his investigation did put a spring in his step: he’d successfully recruited a pretty professor, a botanist whose parents had supervised one of the last remaining seed banks in-country.  She thought he was sincerely coming to her for help– she had no idea it was simply a method to ensnare her into the Ministry.  That’s what’s so easy about these idealistic types, they really wanted to believe in the honesty of people.  And for all their academic achievements, they’re idiots when it came to human nature.

He smugly recalled how his field instincts served him well when he spotted the name Diwata Encarnacion. Her notorious father was belligerent when the authorities seized their research, and his spouse, also a scientist, was a handful.  Fifteen years ago he was part of the team that shut that last seed bank down.  Even if he was relatively fresh as a field agent, he’d gone through a number of hatchet demolition jobs and these “government appropriation assignments”. 

This event barely registered in his memory until he was handed this case of seeking out mutated seed samples.  Funny how the brain worked– quite a bit came back when he opened the dossier and saw that last name pop up.

***

AGENT G had her share of jealous derision as she came up through the ranks in unique fashion. Making it to the Top 3 of her class as a cadet, she was of great intrigue to her instructors and peers.  

Unlike the others who were charismatic and eager to display their skills in leadership and in any number of myriad combat specialties cadets were made to master, she remained distant, seemingly above it all.  More of a sphinx than a person, she never let on all of her capabilities at each stage. Rumor had it that she was probably the most lethal cadet, only allowing others to best her as a form of strategy, an attempt to remain cloaked.  She did not want the attention.  

She was striking like a scalpel. Her razor-sharp quality shone through despite no extra effort of hers to go beyond the requirements for basic presentation. Her angled rigidity emanated perfection to those who were sensitive enough to notice. Ironically, her wariness of the limelight put her high on a list– the list being made by intelligence officers.

Pulled aside by the shady characters in the intelligence unit, she was put on a special track where the full gamut of her skills were revealed. She had a rich imagination and an intellect that could track multitudes of possibilities simultaneously. This rich reservoir hiding beneath the cool veneer surged to the fore when she and her cohorts were put through an unlikely crucible: drama classes.  Once given a role to play, the Sphinx known as AGENT G would disappear into the emotional reality of the character she was assigned, her very aura shedding into who she must become was an uncanny sight.  

Strangest of all, she could retain her critical distance which meant she was always in control. It wasn’t long before she started getting picked for undercover assignments. Due to her age and appearance, it was easy to see where she would be deployed– at colleges, assigned to spot, assess, and subdue possible subversives.  

It was she who began to identify a number of personalities on the campus.  Ironically, it was not the loudest ones who were of most interest– one could scrape off the truth pretty quickly; their revolutionary image more of a theatrical act of youthful rebellion to a parent who was entrenched in the Ministry rather than any real ideals. All sound and fury signifying nothing.  These types caved in very quickly. The ones that were truly subversive tended to be quiet ones from the literature department. Perhaps too much time imagining possible alternate futures led them to be so, but what was of interest to note was many of them were female.  They had the deepest convictions that couldn’t be shaken.  

It was her reports that sparked the glint in Aguirre’s eyes. He called Agent G to his office deep in the bowels of the Ministry.  He squinted, noted how she was looking at him quizzically through the computer readouts of his user interface.  It did not occur to him that the Ministry’s logo– a maze in the shape of an eye– was dead center on his forehead.  Perhaps that gave him an air of prescience.  

“What you’re about to see,” he began as he switched on some documents, “is… confidential.”

He pushed the holograms in her direction while she scanned quickly, her eyes darting to and fro.  “There are rumors that some communities in the regions are creating illegal farms.  We know none of those people would have the knowledge on how to engineer things properly–”

“Which means it’s happening under our nose.”

Aguirre bit his lip for a moment.  “I wouldn’t phrase it like that if you want to keep your job, Agent G.”

“But you are going to transfer me to another school, yes?”

He inhaled deeply, gathering oxygen for a long sentence.  “You were quite effective in your last undercover assignment, rooting out those troublemaking students working at the school paper… Your talents could be better focused at our top university.”

“Tell me who I’m supposed to be.”

Agent G was introduced into the system of the country’s top school, placed in the engineering track so there could be some distance from her targets: the humanities students.  After a few months, she made an interesting discovery: there was one biology student who was also cross-enrolling in a number of humanities classes… Classes that were known to be the breeding ground of subversive thought.  

The student’s name, Esper Encarnacion.  

She had never gotten to personally identify the girl visually, Agent G stymied by the silliest hurdle– her class schedule did not match up to the other student’s– but the name was enough.  Encarnacion disappeared soon after Agent G considered her a person of interest– but not in a manner where authorities would have acquired her.  

The biology student vanished into hiding.

With some sleuthing, Agent G reported back to Aguirre, noting that this girl was the daughter of the head administrator of the last seed bank that was shut down, the same one where Aguirre was at more than a decade prior. She questioned why he did not volunteer this information to her.  

His response, “I didn’t want you to have any predetermined bias. But here you are, arriving at the same surname…” 

He pushed her to probe more. Leaving the relative safety of the university  and going deeper undercover, slowly able to infiltrate aligned groups and gain access. Agent G would report back sporadically over months. It was good that she was of the fairer sex as she discovered the primary cell of these scientifically adept rebels were all female.  

They called themselves the Roses of War.

***

Scrubbing the last moments of Agent G’s life, the squirrely audio twisting the content’s meaning into a hideous comedy – rapid stuttering motions and rewinds echoing the awkwardness of those antiquated silent films being run at high speed. He’d been replaying her trackorder video of the violent encounter to see if he can identify any of the attackers.

The image revealed the yellow-lilac hue of the wasteland amidst a sodium-vapor sky.  Finally given the task to document the rebels in the wasteland, Agent G was walking behind armed personnel when a lightning-strike of red whipped around the point man.  The remaining two in the unit fell in quick succession through the same means, the trackorder falling on its side in time to see shrieking Amazons run through– and fixate on the stoic one in the red veil.  

The veiled amazon walked towards Agent G, face further obscured with warpaint, but she looked almost forlorn, before the signal was cut out.  From this silent exchange it was clear that Agent G knew this veiled woman.

Frustrated from losing his key undercover operative, Aguirre went into the Ministry Archives. Unearthing all the information on the last seed bank the country shut down, he spotted that familiar surname: Encarnacion.

Cross-referencing revealed a family tree: a bitter, widowed father whose late spouse also was a key figure in the seed bank and two daughters– the eldest, currently a lecturer at the University; and the youngest, a top student who dropped out and mysteriously disappeared a few months ago.  

The University professor was the key– the target’s older sister, Diwata Encarnacion.  He took the job of making contact with the professor himself.  Under the guise of consultative help with some mutant seed samples, he put the professor through her paces to test her resolve, stonewalling her access to confidential files to fan the flames of her curiosity and re-confirming his own findings with confidence.  Once she vetted his hunch that these mutant grains were being biologically engineered, he put the next phase of his plan into action – send her into the wasteland to continue Agent G’s search to document and obtain more illegal seed samples. 

Making sure Diwata was monitored, he sent her into the rebel zone with two Agents.  Agent K was the one monitoring her like a hawk at the Ministry– not the brightest, but a good liar when it came to protecting State secrets. The second one, Agent B, volunteered– he was Agent G’s former handler. The legend going around the ranks was that Agent B single-handedly brought back her remains from the rebel zone.   

Alarmingly, neither of the accompanying agents returned– how on Earth was she, an untrained civilian, able to make it back to the retrieval site?  During the debriefing, Diwata noted how they were stunned by their assailants and lost consciousness. The Tech Agent confirmed there was a time gap on her trackorder, possibly caused by the electrical surge from the pulses that stunned the team. Aguirre repeated the word coldly in his mind… possibly.  Under the circumstances, the two Agents were as good as dead.

What was almost certain to Aguirre was that Diwata had made contact with the cell and survived the attack due to her sister. To make sure the professor suspected nothing, he set her up in a much better lab after her return – a way to keep her under close observation should either she or her rebel sister keep in contact; a distraction while he pressed onward to ensnare the younger Encarnacion.  

***

Pulling out his gaudy shades, he activated the mission monitoring window. From a drone’s point-of-view, he saw a solitary agent camouflaged in a scramble-cloak approaching a hidden pocket venting wasps of air in the barren wastelands.  

“Report,” he commanded. 

The Tech-Agent was pulling out a large case when he stopped to answer.  “About to send the nano-drones into the potential exhaust port, Sir.  Should I continue?”   

“Affirmative.  Green light. Will monitor on radio silence.”

Aguirre fixed his tie in the column’s reflection before stepping into yet another State Dinner Party. A wall of granite smiles and plastic interest greeted him. A waiter passed with a tray of Pale Pilsen–the real stuff– not the standard issue synthetic blend offered to the plebeians. He made sure to gulp half in one go.

A nasty chuckle behind him caught him off-guard, the crisp lager biting down the wrong pipe in his throat. It’s a chuckle he knew too well. As he turned, he saw Rodrigo looking as debonair as ever.  

Rodrigo– the one guy since cadet training who could rile Aguirre, always outshining everyone. For almost fifteen years now and he was still always one step ahead. Today, he was commanding the elite squad that would be called if Aguirre messed this up.  

That smug smile was screaming for a fist to send some teeth into the ether, dreamed Aguirre.  It’s taking all his energy to remain calm.  His rival could see him trembling, agitated.

Rodrigo gestured to the cold bottle in Aguirre’s hand.  “Take it easy– that’s legit. Savor it.” His eyes landed on Aguirre’s slight paunch. “But by the looks of it, savoring isn’t in your vocabulary, eh, Aguirre?”

“Not everyone can be as refined as you, Rodrigo.”

“Was that a compliment? Now, now don’t  tell me– killing with kindness your new M.O.?”

 “I can still do it the usual way. With violence.”

Rodrigo glanced at his colleague’s bruised knuckles. “Clearly.”

Aguirre hid his hand in his pocket.

“Looks like your hands are getting sensitive behind all that desk-work, though.”

Aguirre clenched his jaw. “You don’t need a desk to keep working, Rodrigo.  As a matter of fact, I’m conducting an operation right now–“

“Monitoring from that garish set of eyewear,” Rodrigo interjected. “What small-fry are you fishing for today?” He squinted as his line of questioning revealed a deduction. “And why on Earth are you doing the monitoring?  Don’t you have underlings for that yet?”

Aguirre was stewing, Rodrigo always knew how to get under his skin. An alert window popped up in his glasses’ interface. It was the Tech-Agent.

“Sir, the nano drones have witnessed a successful test of rebel seed-bombs. Check the recording, Sir.”

Reviewing the footage, Aguirre saw her. The war-painted girl in the red veil. She was standing on a command-post in a canyon-sized cave with rice terraces receding into the distance, lit by the reflection of UV-light on the gargantuan crystals that permeated the space. Beside her were a few of her banshee-screeching bitches, probably the same ones captured on Agent G’s trackorder.  

He recognized one of them from Agent G’s trackorder video– the kampilan-wielding warrior with her hair braided into a samurai bun, one of the lieutenants of this band of outlaws.  She heaved a launcher onto her shoulder while another rebel loaded a small orb. The orb was launched into the barren area in the tilled cave field before them. It burst, sending an explosion of seeds that quickly germinated. Within seconds, the barren field was covered in a fresh blanket of wheat.

His nightmares just took one step closer to reality.

“I’ll leave the hobnobbing, ass-kissing, and dick-polishing to pros like you,” Aguirre hissed, tapping Rodrigo on the shoulder. “The big boys got real work to do!” He didn’t see Rodrigo raise his glass towards him in a mock-toast.

Passing his reflection in the columns with haste, his bruised knuckles exposed again when he activated the comms pin, pinching the flesh on his neck.

“Attention. This is Aguirre. Tech-Agent 35 has made contact with the enemy. Launch Phase 2.  Repeat, Phase 2 is a greenlight. Launch Phase 2.”

Refusing to take his civilian transport, Aguirre hopped onto his preferred bug-like Metrocom craft. He never had the class to be in those fancy events, why bother holding up appearances?  As the ship buzzed through the Bio-Dome’s clogged airspace, he reset the necktie flapping on his face back into his pin-stripe vest, all the while monitoring the action.

He saw a wave of single-man assault craft close in on the hidden exhaust port, blowing it open and hurtling down the ventilation shaft to the rebel’s base.  From the nano-drones’ onboard cameras, he saw them chasing rebels into a claustrophobic maze of subterranean passageways that diverged and converged like veins.  One Amazon, trailing the others, sealed a blast door, charging up her two itak with their crackles of red energy.  She unleashed a flurry of arnis strikes, knocking all the nano-drones in pursuit down.

Marching down the halls of the Ministry, Aguirre was barking orders while suiting up on the move– a coterie of assistants helping him as if in the middle of a costume change for a concert where he was in between belting out song numbers. “Nano-Drone Unit 5 is down! Nano-Units 2 and 3, redirect to Unit 5’s last location and continue pursuit! Assault Squad 4, follow those Nano-Units and be ready to meet hostiles on those coordinates!  That’s where the leader is!” 

In full field gear, Aguirre felt comfortable again, completely in his element. Except for his belt, which remained a bit tight.

***

The squad of Metrocom ships hurtle through the poisoned atmosphere of the Philippine wastelands, an image worthy of Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries”. Aguirre rode at the arrow-point of their formation, gritting his teeth as he observed the ongoing assault in the insurgent’s extensive underground base.  

Tired out by waves of nano-drone attack runs, the arnis-styled rebel combatant was finally subdued by reserve forces. Those same forces were still trying to penetrate the blast door.  How many agents do you need to get through a blast door? Idiots.

He redirected his focus towards the seed bombs in the main cavern with the fresh wheat field. It looked like the Roses had followed their protocols to a tee– they’d managed to destroy all the seed bomb samples.       

Aguirre’s eyes grew wide when he saw an agent detaining a rebel of particular interest– the tall, kampilan-wielding one from Agent G’s trackorder.  “Agents! All eyes on the tall insurgent in the command center. That is a high-value target, keep her alive!” He smacked one of his underlings’ helmets in the Metrocom ship. “Get me off this thing, now!”

Straddling the single-man assault craft lovingly dubbed the Penetrator by the most misogynistic agents, he launched himself down the exposed ventilation shaft. The adrenaline was rushing fast as Aguirre zigged and zagged in the near-dark route towards the cave’s main chamber. His readouts noted something interesting as he went deeper and deeper: the level of oxygen was rising.

At the end of the ventilation shaft, the horrific grandeur of the underground base revealed itself: verdant rice terraces lit up with purple UV lights as far as the eye could see! He set the Penetrator down on the command center’s raised walkways and its pulpit-like center where the rebel was being held.

He walked right up to the detained Amazon who spat at him, her samurai bun now undone. Disgusted, Aguirre threw her against the blown-out computer consoles and pressed her neck down onto the cold metal flooring with his boot. “This is one of the cunts that killed Agent G and her unit,” he muttered to the agents that had subdued her.  

The agents growled, knowing the story.  

“Strip her and take her into custody. Make sure she’s double-bound!”

“Yes, Sir!” The agents were a flurry of activity as they began ripping the rebel’s accoutrements and uniform off while dragging her away towards a Metrocom ship waiting topside. She was not going without a fight. Even disarmed and shackled, she managed to subdue a few agents with her ferocity, but even that was no match for the pulse from a thunderstick.

Aguirre walked towards the one that initiated this operation with the nano-drones, the Tech-Agent in the scramble cloak.  “Give me a sitrep.”

“The unit assigned to the first blast doors finally got through and took out some more rebels – but the leader seems to be managing to elude us. A few agents are giving chase.”

“Maintain pursuit. What are your findings here?”

“We’ll know more if we can retrieve anything from their computers. They did a solid slash-and- burn job while abandoning the place.”  

“How come none of these bitches are carrying O2?”

“Sir– look at their oxygen levels here.  You can confirm my readings.”

Convinced by the numbers on the Tech Agent’s readout and his own in his personal user interface, Aguirre removed his helmet and inhaled the air. The rush of clean oxygen seemed to give Aguirre visions– his eyes as enlarged as his nostrils. After scanning the vast cavern, he turned to the Tech.  “Burn it.”

The command was relayed. The Pyro-Techs took their positions in front of each field.  They all looked towards Aguirre at the command center who raised his bruised-knuckled fist into the air with one hand while activating the comms on his neck. His voice echoed throughout the cavern with the aid of loudspeakers.  “Light it up!”

A tsunami of fire engulfed the terraces, turning the once purple-lit cavern into a vision of Hell.  The fresh field of wheat curled and withered before turning to ash, the life just blossoming moments ago extinguished in a haze of black smoke.

Aguirre’s stoic expression gazed at the conflagration. Deep inside, a plume of pride was welling up in his breast. He didn’t catch the biggest fish, but he caught a big one, and this inferno was adding another notch on his list of conquests.  Take that, Rodrigo, you shit.

His free hand clutched victoriously at his belt buckle. It seemed to fit nicely at this moment. The purple bruises were barely visible in the undulating waves of red and black.

About the Author. Keith Sicat is a filmmaker and comic book creator behind “OFW: Outerspace Filipino  Workers” which has proven to be a deep conceptual well for his pursuits in speculative fiction. His films have screened internationally with notable works including award-winners “Rigodon”, “Woman of the Ruins”, and “Alimuom”.  Also working in  animation, he was the script consult for the first 3D CG animated feature in the Philippines  “RPG: Metanoia” and helped develop the first Japanese-Filipino anime co-production “Barangay 143” with TV Asahi that is on NETFLIX.  He is also the Program Director of the NETFLIX supported short film lab iNDIEGENIUS which aims to give more opportunities to young regional filmmakers.