SIV Endgame: An Opco Boone Adventure

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Synopsis

MCA drops remaining irregulars unit on the beach at Cayman brac. The mission is to liberate is a detachment of SICAVs help captive by enemy stocklending counterparts who are using it as a cheap source of sales credits.

Prologue

“When it came, the end-game came down fast and hard. It was in a skirmish with a rogue structured investment vehicle in the Caymans.”

Beach landing

Group Captain David Bundie set his jaw. He scanned the ragged remnants of his company, lined up on a pew and hooked into the static margin line. Of the original 60, seven soldiers remained.

The old MCA transporter was a Spartan crate. It rattled and droned and swept low across the water.

The combatant units around the Cayman theatre were battle-hardened LLCs. They went right down the capital structure. Bundie mandated prep for stocks. Shoulder-mounted Mizzlers and, in case of ALD cointel interference, a brace of bump-stock pledge models. To handle synthetic light arms, they packed with late-model ISDAs retrofitted with dynamic margin CSAs.

And then there was Frenchie. He had an assortment of exotic continental fire-irons: an antique FBF side-loader, a vol-insulated CMOF and his trusty Osler if they really got in a jam.

Bundie addressed the line. “Okay, lads, this is it. Anyone who wants can stay —”

They didn’t let him finish. They barked, “Sir! No, Sir!” in staccato unison.

They wouldn’t have it any other way: it was written in their eyes: it flowed wordlessly between them. They functioned like a single organism. Bundie looked down, shut his eyes and smiled. “All right, my lovelies, all right.”

The confirm squawked. The netting flag flashed steady green.

“All right, lads, we’re over the target trade date. Let’s rock this”

They set their IM dials to 20, shuffled along the cargo deck and numbered off as they dropped out of the MCA.

Bundie said, “THREE.”

Biff said, “SEVEN.”

Chip said, “EIGHT.”

Swart said, “TWENTY-FIVE.”

Tucker said, “THIRTY-ONE.”

The kid looked with the radio unit gulped. Just him and the Frenchman left.

Frenchie grinned. “Allez, garçon.”

The kid dithered.

“Nervous?”

The kid nodded.

“First time?”

The kid scowled. “I’ve been nervous plenty of times.” He bolted, hollering, “THIRTY-NINE.”

Frenchie slapped the tin, yelled, “SOIXANTE-NEUF” and fell away towards the roiling combat theatre. The MCA clambered into the sky.

The lads fell through anti-avoidance flak and swingeing searchlights Their chutes bloomed with collateral as they struck their margin thresholds. They floated down in a tight pattern onto the beach.

The kid with the radio unit hit the deck first. Frenchie was last: with five feet to go he snapped-off a salute and pulled a three-point hero drop in the high-tide flotsam.

Rehypothecator choppers hung low: they made a devilish din, rucked up the tree-top foliage and drew attention from the unit. The boys yukked it up, packed up their ATEs and hit the tree-line.

On-field briefing and the Liquidator

The unit formed up under the trees.

Bundie clamped a hand over his hat and bellowed over the racket: “This could get tasty, lads. Hostiles in these parts are well-organised and well-armoured: limited recourse shielding fore and aft.”

Tucker chomped on his cheroot. He split a toothy grin and patted his barrel. It was one ungainly bastard. It had some universal dock on the magazine.

The comlink chattered. It was Cassie Lieberman from the Risk Office. “Heads up, fellas: we are reading thin-cap espievie operatives in the area. Aural vector says they are headed your way. Margin up, people.”

“Ain’t no pissant LRV going get in the way of this honey. I call it the Liquidator.”

“What the hell is that, Tucks?” said Frenchie. “Did you make eet at ’ome?”

Tucker shrugged. “It’s a P.B.A. It’s got herbs, my dudes. Multi-calibre. Universal netter. It’s got stocks, recalls, telescopic margin lending, I.M. recalibration real time. I had it built to custom spec in the Links chop shop.” He handed it to Chippy. “Have a go at this baby —”

Chippy waved it about.

Tucker ducked and swayed. “Whoa, man, Just point that bad boy the fuck away from me.”

Chippy shrugged. He swung 45 degrees and squeezed off a round.

The air boiled. The boys hit the deck. There was an unholy blam and a wolf of blue flame. Chippy flew ten feet back and landed in a heap. Tucker flapped smoke away and spluttered.

“Jesus!”

Eighty feet hence, the charred stump of a beach palm smouldered. Forty feet beyond that, what was left of palm of it crackled and smoked on the sand. A cloud mushroomed above the clearing.

Frenchie chuckled. Biff whistled.

Chippy was out cold.

Tucker grinned, slapped Chippy’s chops and brought his buddy back up topside.

“You like? Huh?”

Chippy, prone, moaned. The black mushroom woofed and dissipated.

Bundie scrambled to his feet, glaring. “Jesus, Tucker! You’ll kill the lot of us! They’ll see that blast signal for miles around!”

The SIV advance

On cue, beyond the dunes: a low, mechanical clanking. It sounded heavy. Relentless. Huge. It sounded like a max-vol slice of hell.

“We have ears on it, Cass.”

The clanking ramped up.

Chippy, still prone, groaned.

“What ze hell is zat?” said Frenchie.

“Oh, great. They’re on to us.” Bundie re-glared at Tucker. Tucker shrugged.

Bundie held up a paw. “O.K., this is top urgent now, boys. Hostiles are imminent.”

The unit shucked their MSLAs and formed a circle round Chippy. He came around slow. Tucker face-dashed him from a canteen. He moaned.

Bundie said, “We got an I.D. on the SICAV yet, kiddo?”

The radio operator was a kid of barely eighteen. He ran a redline. “A ... a ... rel ... reloadable MTN c ... c ... configuration of s ... some sort, sir. P ... p ... programmable, most likely.”

“Thank-you, Lance-Corporal.”

“And sir?”

“Yes, Lance-Corporal?”

We ... we ... we are detecting background heat signature of — ”

The lad stopped.

“Of? Well, come on: spit it out, lad.”

“A GFO.”

Frenchie let out a low whistle. “Une bureau-famille? In Cayman? ’E is a long way from ’ome, avec certitude.”

The clanking got real.

Bundie swept up the map. “We need to move off the beach, lads. And fast.”

SICAVs?

The unit fanned. An MOU — a big bastard — smashed through the pines. Its armoured turret swivelled and lined them up.

“Jesus. SICAV! Split!”

The unit spritzed. Swart whoooed. She shucked her CSA and reloaded.

Biffer yeehaared. He banged in a clip of self-referencing CLNs.

Tucker blammed out some shells from the Liquidator. He had a mind to disorient the advancing vehicle and throw an indeterminacy curtain around the theatre. But the SICAV kept coming.

Frenchie flip-cocked his piece and hollered, “Oh-ho-ho, c’est la feeding time at ze zoo, mon cher.”

“Wait.” Bundie sniffed the air. “Something’s — not — right. They’re — it’s just — ”

But the boys didn’t wait. They weren’t listening. They smelled a firefight. They struck positions and pressed. In a co-ordinated sequence, they drew their ISDAs and banged in margin clips.

Tucker and Frenchie went left. Biffer went right. Swart flicked off her vol damper and went charging in on foot with a sawn-off repo.

Bundie stood motionless in the clearing. Adrenalin flooded his core. “Something’s not right, lads,” he muttered, but the boys were in the theatre and nothing he could do could change the course of conflict now.

The unit kept advancing.

Only the Lance-Corporal even heard him. The boy stayed close. “What do you think it is, sir?”

Bundie mussed the lad’s hair. “I dunno, son, but stay frosty — this is going to get sticky. Be prepared to move fast on my command. You may have to make some calls.

The boy regarded him with a steeliness that took him aback.

“I’ve your back, lad.”

“I know, sir. But who’s got yours?”

Bundie smiled at the impertinence. This was what he wanted in his unit. Spunk. He pressed a weapon into the boy’s hand: a late-model ISDA. The boy gaped.

“You do, son. We stand, or fall, together.”

The boy nodded. Again, with the steely stare.

At that moment the SICAV’s giant conduit tracks started rotating forward.

Biff called it: “Stand by: SICAV rolling.”

The issue/redemption protocols coughed into life with a belch of diesel.

Frenchie yipped and cocked his F.B.F.

Bundie barked, “hold it, Frenchie.”

“Oh, come on, cherie — we must ’ave a little fun, n’est-ce pas? —”

Bundie shook his head. “Let’s hit the trees, boys.”

Lance Corporal checked his DV and muttered co-ordinates into his comlink. What happened next would be with the boy for the rest of his life — a period which turned out to be longer than, as he watched the disaster unfold, he held any hope of expecting to see. The caterpillars ate up the sand.

A SICAV should be no match for an experienced unit of seasoned killers like the Irregulars. SICAVs had mucho grunt on the flat and toted decent firepower — you couldn’t be casual with them at close quarters — but against anyone who knew what they was doing, they were easy pickings. They were unwieldy, slow, generally only adept at passive and retail conflict: limited downside protection against liquidity drains, underpowered in choppy markets — basically under-gunned. As such, they tended to be detailed with greenhorn sappers a fighting force could afford to lose.

But this SICAV was odd. Bundie watched it from his foxhole: it was nimble, agile, quick. The crew was more capable than your average UCITS infrantry unit: less predictable in their defensive manoeuvres. And the vehicle had a dramatically truncated reporting and compliance harness. The depo — there was no goddamn depo.

And Bundie realised as it thundered across the sand, this thing was fast. Way too fast for an ordinary UCITS unit.

That’s no moon

The SICAV reoriented and rolled at Bundies’ exact position. It came steaming straight at him.

The RO comlink crackled. Heads up boss, you got company.

“I copy, Cassie”.

“Shorts are starting to gett crowded, Bundie. Your team got the safeties off?”

Bundie hiffed in a percussive QIB. It blapped spectacular. It threw up dirt and sand and left a decent ditch. The SIV stopped on a dime. It backed up. Its front turret swivelled round and regarded the crater. A fire hose extended. and filled it with water. The SIV rolled over it.

“Holy hell,” muttered Tucker. “Self-sourcing liquidity. That's pretty cool.”

Bundie thought, that's more than “cool”. That’s unbelievable. Where the hell is it sourcing that cash? Then Bundie knew it: this was no ordinary SICAV.

Chip said, “Throw in another. They have limited reserves. They can’t do that indefinitely.”

“Wait — ” Bundie muttered.

But Tucker was fast. He bit off the pin and tossed in another QIB. “Roll this, Fatboy,”

The QIB flew. The SIV retooled. It snapped back it hose and cracked an ack-ack out of the turret. It shot the QIB out of the air.

It fizzed and spun and molten glassed the sand.

Scheisse. How the hell was it doing that? It was gaming out scenarios and learning the Irregulars manoeuvres as fast as they could change them up.

The rear gunner popped the turret. Bundie clocked his uniform insignia — that’s three-star MD at the mandate and a EVP on the confirmator. And they were tooled the fuck up: these were not standard issue CP-shooters.

The SIV anticipated his every move. It was like it had a direct line into his goddamn amygdala.

Mean while the boys had surrounded it. Chipper was engaged in a repo firefight with its debt warehouse. He was levering up.

Swart was banging out some semi automatic synthetic longs on an HFT modified ISDA. Swart’s piece was margin cooled, but the Swartster liked the touch of warmth in the barrel so she habitually set it to static. The SIV started drawing margin.

“All right, you’re asking for it!” Swart was well stocked and let it rip.

The SIV hoovered up the cash and doubled down. “This one’s frisky, Skip,” he yelled. His spirits were high. This was what he signed on for. Bundie allowed himself a smile at his old pal’s energy. But as suddenly as it spread, that smile froze.

“All right, friend, you want liquidity? Have some goddamn liquidity.” Tucker loaded up a fresh magazine of long-dated IRS and shouldered the PBA. He flipped the safety on the NAV trigger.

“Tucker! No!”

Time slowed. Tucker tilted his head, regarded his commander and winked. Bundie could see his words fighting through the dense atmosphere, wrestling with the cordite and flying clods and sandspritzes. It never made it. It was as if the universe contrived to wrangle disaster where there might be triumph. Should be triumph.

Bundie bellowed, “Dive!”

The lad said, “What?”

“Take cover!”

Bundie grabbed the lad by his collar and thrust him violently into the base of the cavity formed by the uprooted smoking stump of the palm tree. “Hey!” he squeaked. He cracked his head and woozed.

There was a moment of clarity. A sparkular gleam, refracting a rainbow of hope, then a subsonic dropout as Tucker squeezed. A white hot beam of dynamic IM spewed from that magnificent weapon. The arcing white light of a 6(a) notice lit the sky. It hit the SIV’s main margin tank and blew a great hole in it. The liquidity exploded, fanning great arcing sparks of white hot glitter into the sky. They hovered for a moment, congealed into balls of liquid lightening, then zapped out, like targeted missiles, straight at the other irregulars: first Swart, then Chipper, then Tucker, then Frenchie then the squibs whipsawed at Bundie’s tree trunk, slashing here, snapping there as if feeling for Bundie and his ISDA.

Each of the soldiers was transfixed. The glow enveloped them, enfolding them it spinning, misting galaxies of stars.

The boys relaxed and smiled, and beatific glee radiated from them.

Risk control buzzed in on the static. “Irregular unit 5 we are seeing elevated levels of concentration in your sector. Consider margin adjustments. Acknowledge please.

Bundie said, “copy.”.

Frenchie said, “copy.”

Swart said, “copy.”

Tucker said, “copy.”

Doughnut from Chipper.

Risk control again: “Chipper. Do you copy?

Chipper moaned with delight. “I feel... Awesome!”

Tucker quipped: “We’ll, ahh, take that as a yes, then?”

The boys yukked on the com channel. Bundie snapped them off. “Officer Chipstowe, do you copy?”

“Feel that power,” murmured Swart. She banged in another clip of self-referencers and let the SIV have it. The thick cable of energy connecting her weapon to the whole fattened.

The SIV was somehow drawing power from their weapons.

Bundie threw his back against the trunk. The lads — battle seasoned warriors all — were slowly losing contact with their grounding, floating free of their stoplosses, risk control parameters and even trading mandates, their figures shimmering, resolutions pixelating, their guttural moans of pleasure now twisted and contorted as if being strained through a different kind of spacetime geometry.

They beheld their weapons in blissed-out curiosity, entranced by the St Vitus dance in which they were now undoubtedly part, blamming away wilfully, while the margin cash flew out of their ammo tanks.

Bundie knitted his brow. Somehow, the SIV had reversed the usual flow of energy and was drawing pools of liquidity, great firehoses if the stuff, into the siv.

What a it doing? Why?

It got weirder. As fast as the boys could loose off IM rounds, VM rounds were coming back. Swart goosed his stressed day scenario to compensate but he could barely hold it level.

Chipper was wailing. “Im stuck on static,sir!I ... I ... I’m getting eroded. He's draining me!

Stop out, Chipper.

“What? No need! It’s fine, man! Look at this handsome beast! Its Sharpe ratio is off the scale man, ahahah!”

Chipper was gone.

Swart, close out. At the double!

“I ... I ... I can't, sir. There is no bid. I repeat, there is no bid!

There must be a market! I repeat stopout!

“There is no bid. The market is dead sir. But I can ride this out. Let me inject just ... A ... Little .... More”

“Officer Swart, stop out!”

But Swart, too, was gone; collapsed in paroxysms of maniaca,l howling laughter. He floated up into the golden cloud while a concentrated beam of pure VM issued out of his weapon, all the while his image diffused into slowly scattering points of golden light.

Frenchie stood staring, in puzzlement, at this odd spectacle, a writhing tongue of lightning gripping on to his master. Frenchie has not seen it, but the levels in his cash tank were dropping like a stone.

Then Bundie clocked it. A dim golden miasma was beginning to surround Frenchie too.

“Frenchie! Cut your losses! Shut them down!”

“Shut what down?”

“The positions! Cut your positions! Cut them all! There is no time to lose!”

Frenchie shrugged. “Eh, bien, it’s okay, Mon Cher, I ’ave beaucoup margin.”

“No, you don't! Look!” Bundie punter to the track strapped to his old pal’s utility belt.

Frenchie glanced down and double took. “Sacre bleu!”

He hollered at Frenchie.
but they knocked out his ISDAs. The PV boiled into the atmosphere. 

Separation

The SIV ran a defensive line between Bundy and his men.

“Fuck,” he said.

He was left defending the back-end with a repurposed ’85 OSLA and a left-handed FBF.

Frenchie loved it: he dug that Gallic style. Tucker less so: he didn’t read foreign lingos and couldn’t abide garlic.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” He cursed at the FBF, though Bundie had clocked it and already figured it for a sweet shooting iron.

“How am I meant to use this piece of shit? The instructions are all in French!”

“Just point the fucking thing and pull the trigger, son,” Bundie growled.

“Really?”

“If you want to see your sweetheart again, sure.”

Tucker got the point and lit up and lit up a VWAP. It burned with a magnesium flare.

The SIV advanced. It took out Tucker with a self-referencer. Tucker squealed bad. It was unbecoming but it fit the pattern.

The SIV kept coming.

Bundie tried to close it out. He flipped a downgrade trigger on a DRV: nothing. Hey called key man — homme clef — on the FBF. It misfired.

The SIV rolled closer.

Bundie jammed a second-to-default EM sovereign basket into the magazine of the only piece he had to hand — a rusty old semi-automatic EMTA — and lit up the theatre. It flamed into life.

It was dirty, noisy and hot — he shucked out burnt up RWAs and kept reloading — and at last it holed the SIV. It stumbled. Its rollers uncoiled and it stoved into the sand on one knee. It was crippled but still shooting — eventually it crapped out but not before it had annihilated three quarters of Bundie’s unit.

Tucker was already goneski. Chipper was dead. Biffer was in a bad way. Blood gouted from his mouth. He wouldn’t last long.

Frenchie — dear, dear Frenchie - so called for his expertise with the ABF — was out cold, two limbs blown clean off. They bobbed redly in the surf.

Bundie fished one out - he grabbed it by the boot — and bought it back to his stricken pal.

Frenchie drifted back into a shallow woozy consciousness. He was deathly pale, wet sand caked in his hair and his face. He moaned. His breath rattled and gurgled. He was in a bad way.

Bundie fed his old pal water from his canteen — just wet his lips and tossed the useless limb on the sand.

“Thank you, Bundie,” croaked the old soldier. He looked at the leg. “I didn’t think I’d see that again. I lost it in the drink. I thought it would sink.”

“I guess you got lucky, French,” Bundie grunted. “It was a floating leg”.

Frenchie coughed, and red spritzed his hand and his chin.

“Come on French, we can get you out of here. If we get you to a medivac they may even save the leg —”

“Come on, boss. You know it. I know it. I am done for.”

“No, Frenchie. Don’t you dare give up on me. We’ll find that leg. We can buy one in. I’ll pay the costs. He shook his head. “There’s no bid, skips. You know it.”

“No, Frenchie. No. I don’t know it. I won’t hear of it —” but Bundie could feel it slipping away. He felt the air between them thicken in to a dull miasma, insensate, as if slipping under an anaesthetic. He shook his head mutely, his eyes welled, and he watched the scene at a remove, out of body, through a fogged lens.

Frenchie He sat up weakly and regarded the smoking SIV. “They will be back soon. Don’t let them take me.”

“Oh, I’m not leaving you, Frenchie. We’re getting you out of here.”

Frenchie coughed up more blood and limply shook his head. “Don’t be a damn fool. I’m done for. I’ll slow you up. If you take me they’ll catch us all. The world needs you, Bundie. Put me out of my misery. Don’t let them —”

“I can’t do that to you Frenchie. You know I can’t.”

“This is my prayer for relief, boss.”

“Don’t talk like that Frenchie. Bundie’s voice was beginning to waiver.

Frenchie shut his eyes and whispered, “Let me go.”

The dying soldier pulled weakly at Bundie’s OSLA. He pressed it under his chin.

“I can’t French!”

“Do it.”

The familiar crump of an expiring put option plouffed in the sand a few yards away.

“They are coming. That one was out of range. The next will be —”

“No!”

“Right in-the-money.” Another crump. It was closer. It showered the pals with sand. “Do it, David.”

Not once in their 14-year service history had his loyal deputy ever called him by his Christian name. Bundie realised what he must do. The beach, the battlefield, the theatre of conflict, the wider geopolitical situation of the world — all presented itself, as an interconnected whole, at once, in crystal clarity. He had a role. He had to carry on.

Bundie swallowed and looked tenderly at his pal. “I’ll never forget you, Frenchie Saunders,” he said.

Frenchie closed his eyes. “Put me out of my pain, boss,” he breathed. “This is — my prayer — for —”

Bundie said, “Relief”. He cocked the old Stocklender. A quick static burst of cancellable terms yammered into his friend.

Frenchie slumped. A smile spread across his face. He looked at peace.

Another short-dated put crumped adjacent. Closer. Bundie crouched over his friend, sheltering his body from the showering terrain. He closed his pal’s eyes and commando-crept into the low brush off the beach.

A small unit of marine SIVs advanced up the beach.

Bundie made the tree line and stopped. The OSLA!

He could see it, still clutched in Frenchie’s cold, dead fingers.

History will record that the entire division of SIVs were wiped out later that day by a coordinated denial of service attack on its rear CP programme. When the relief forces combed the beach after the armistice they found no trace of either man, or the OSLA. }} }}