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{{a|opco|}}The endgame
The end-game came down fast and hard.
 
“Okay, lads, this is it. Anyone who wants to leave —”
 
The men, barked, “Sir! No, Sir!” in staccato unison.
They woudn’t have it any other way.  It was written in their eyes: it flowed wordlessly when their gazes met.
 
It came in a skirmish with a rogue structured investment vehicle in the Caymans. The irregulars dropped out of the MCA transporter into a delta-one configuration. Frenchie pulled a three-point hero drop. The boys yukked and moved out.
 
They were armed for stocks – they had some shoulder–mounted Mizzlers, a bump–stock pledge model that died from the hip — in case of ALD interference, and five equity deriv-equipped ISDAs.
 
Frenchie, of course, had his usual assortment of exotic concoctions: some antique Gallic FBF side-arms, an old CMOF and his trusty Osler if they really got in a jam.
 
He looked around the boys.
 
“This could get – ah – a little tasty. These puppies are well armoured: limited recourse shielding fore and aft.”
 
Tucker chomped on his cheroot, split a toothy grin and patted the barrel of his weapon. He called it the Liquidator. “Ain’t no pissant LRV going get in the way of this.”
 
Chippy looked on – the piece was an ungainly bastard. It had some universal dock on the magazine.
 
“What da fuck is dat, Tucker?”
 
Frenchie chuckled. “That home made, Tucks?”
 
Tucker shrugged. “its a P.B. style universal netter.”
 
“BP? A Blue Peter job?” chippy roared.
 
“Prime breaker, baby. It’s a custom-build. I had it made to personal spec in the Linklaters chop shop. Its got stocks, recalls, telescopic margin lending, I.M. recalibration real time.  Have a go at this baby –”
 
Tucker handed it to Chippy. “Just point that badboy 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, a wolf of blue flame and Chippy flew ten feet back and landed in a heap. Tucker kept his feet, flapped smoke away and spluttered.
 
Eighty feet hence, the charred stump of a beach palm. Forty feet beyond that, what was left of it crackled and smoked on the sand.
 
Frenchie chuckled.
 
Biff whistled.
 
A cloud mushroomed above the clearing. The fallen palm spat and flamed.
 
Chippy was out cold. Tucker slapped his chops and brought him back topside.
 
Tucker grinned. “You like? Huh?”
 
Bundie scrambled to his feet. He glared.
 
“Jesus, Tucker! You’ll kill the lot of us! They’ll see that blast signal for miles around!”
 
Chippy came round slow.
 
Tucker face-dashed him from a canteen.
 
Chippy moaned.
 
Bundie held up a paw. “Shhh.”
 
Beyond the dunes: a low mechanical clanking. It sounded heavy. It sounded relentless. It sounded like a maxi-sized slice of trouble.
 
“They’re on to us.” Something in the aural vectors said it was headed their way.
 
“Oh, fucking great,” growled Bundie.
 
The clanking got louder.
 
“What ze hell is zat?” said Frenchie.
 
“An MTN. Programmable, most likely. They don’t mess around.”
 
Bundie swept up the map.  “C’mon  –  we need to move out, lads, and fast.”
 
They got no further. The armoured turret of a huge MOU smashed through the pines.
 
“Jesus. SIVs!”
 
Tucker whoooed. She shucked his CSA and reloaded.
 
Biffer yeehaared.
 
Frenchie flip-cocked his piece and said, “feeding time at ze zoo, mon cher.”
 
Bundie sniffed the air. “Something’s — not — right. They’re  –  it’s just  –  ”
 
The boys weren't listening. They smelled a firefight. They fanned out to fill their boots.
 
Tucker and Frenchie went left.
 
Biffer went right.
 
Bundie stood motionless in the clearing. Adrenalin flooded his core. “Something’s not right, lads,” he said.
 
“Oh, come on, cherie — we ’ave a little fun, n’est-ce pas? –”
 
Bundie shook his head. “Let’s hit the trees, boys.”
 
What happened next would be with him for the rest of his life – a period far longer than, as he watched the disaster unfold, he held any hope of expecting to see.
 
SIVs had grunt in the flat, toted decent firepower — you couldn't be casual with them — but they were unwieldy bastards. They had limited downside protection against liquidity drains, were underpowered in choppy markets, and basically under-gunned. Against and anyone who knew what it was doing they were easy pickings. They should be no match for an experienced unit of seasoned killers like the Irregulars.
 
As such, tended to be staffed with greenhorn sappers you could afford to lose. The industry slang for the poor suckers aboard a SIV were “expendables”.
 
Bundie surveyed the theatre from his foxhole. He knew at once: these were no ordinary SIVs.
They were more manoeuvrable: more agile, quicker to react; more volatile, less predictable in their defensive manoeuvres.
 
They gamed out scenarios and learned the Irregs manuoevres. Bundie clocked the insignia on the uniform  –  that's three star MD at the commends and a EVP on the gatling. And they were tooled the fuck up: these were not standard issue C-peashooters
 
The boys quickly p.
 
The S. I. V. anticipated his every move like it had a direct line into his goddamn amygdala. He loaded up a fresh magazine of long-dated IRS, but they knocked out his ISDAS. The PVs boiled into the atmosphere.
 
“Fuck,” he said.
 
He was left defending the back-end with a repurposed 85 OSLA and a left–handed FBF.
Frenchy 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 F.B.F., 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. The sic stumbled. Its runners 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. Do it.”
 
Another crump. It was closer. It showered the pals with sand.
 
“Do it, boss.”
 
At that moment Bundie realised what he must do. He saw the beach, the battlefield, the theatre of conflict, the wider geopolitical situation of the world, 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 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.
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