SIV Endgame: An Opco Boone Adventure: Difference between revisions

{{a|opcobooneadventure|{{image|SIV|png|}}}}“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.  

Group Captain David Bundie set his jaw. He scanned the ragged company, lined up on a pew and hooked into the static margin line.   

The [[MCA]] transporter was an antique Spartan crate. It rattled and droned and swept low across the water.  

“Okay, lads, this is it. Anyone who wants can stay aboard —”

The men, barked, “Sir! No, Sir!” in staccato unison. They numbered off by instinct. Of the original company of 60, nine remained.  

“SEVEN!”

“EIGHT!”

“THIRTY-NINE!”

“FORTY-SIX!”

“FIFTY-ONE!”

“SIXTY!”  

They wouldn’t have it any other way: it was written in their eyes: it flowed wordlessly between them, when he met their collective gaze. They functioned like a single organism.  

Bundie looked down, shut his eyes and smiled. “All right, my lovelies, all right.”

The [[Confirmation - ISDA Provision|confirm]] horn squawked. The [[Close-out netting|netting flag]] flashed green. The nine extant irregulars dropped out of the [[Master Confirmation Agreement|MCA]]. They set their [[correlation]] dials to 1.0 and went in [[delta-one]] configuration. They formed a tight landing pattern on the beach.  

Frenchie was oldest in the company. He came down last. He snapped-off his chute and pulled a [[three-point hero drop]] in the high-tide flotsam. The boys yukked it up and moved out.

Frenchie, of course, had his usual assortment of exotic concoctions: an antique [[FBF]] side-arm, an old CMOF and his trusty [[OSLA Anatomy|Osler]] if they really got in a jam.  

The unit formed up under the trees. The choppers hung low: they made devilish din and rucked up the tree-top foliage.

Tucker chomped on his cheroot. He split a toothy grin and patted his barrel.   

 

“What the hell is ''that'', Tucks?” Frenchie chuckled. “Home-made?”

 

Tucker shrugged. “It’s a [[Prime brokerage agreement|P.B.A.]] It’s got ''herbs'', my dudes. Multi-calibre. Universal [[master netting agreement|netter]].”

 

“BP? A Blue Peter job?” Chippy roared.

“P. B., As in ''Prime Breaker'', baby. I had it built to custom spec in the [[Linklaters|Links]] chop shop. It’s got stocks, recalls, [[dynamic margin|telescopic margin]] lending, [[Initial margin|I.M. recalibration]] real time. Have a go at this baby —”  

He handed it to Chippy. Chippy waved it about.  

“''Jesus''.”

Eighty feet hence, the charred stump of a beach palm smouldered. Forty feet beyond that, what was left of the rest 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 topside.

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

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

Beyond the dunes: a low mechanical clanking.  

“What ze hell is ''zat''?” said Frenchie.  

It sounded heavy. It sounded relentless. It sounded ''huge''. It sounded like a max-vol slice of hell.  

Something in the aural vectors said it was headed their way.

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

“We got an ID yet, kiddo?”

The radio operator was barely eighteen. He ran a [[redline]]. “A reloadable [[MTN]] configuration of some sort, sir. Programmable, most likely.”

Frenchie let out a low whistle. Bundie swept up the map. “Thank-you, Lance-Corporal. C’mon, fellows — we need to move off the beach, lads, and fast.”

They got no further. The armoured turret of a huge MOU smashed through the pines.  

“Jesus. [[SIV]]s!”

Swart ''whoooed''. She shucked her [[CSA]] and reloaded.

Biffer yeehaared.  

Tucker blammed out out some shells from the Liquidator. It disoriented the advancing machines and threw a curtain of indeterminacy around the theatre. The [[SIV]]s kept coming.

Frenchie flip-cocked his piece and hollered, “feeding time at ze zoo, ''mon cher''.”  

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

But the boys weren’t listening. They smelled a firefight. They fanned out and pressed, intent on filling their boots.  

Tucker and Frenchie went left. Biffer went right. Swart kicked 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 screamed.  

But the unit kept advancing.  

Only the Lance-Corporal even heard him. The boy stayed close. He mussed the lad’s hair. “Stay frosty, son — this is going to get sticky. But be prepared to move fast. You may have to make some calls. I’ve your back, lad.”

The boy regarded him with a steeliness that took him aback. “But who’s got yours, sir?”

Bundie pressed a weapon into the boy’s hand. It was a late model [[ISDA Master Agreement|ISDA]]. The boy gaped.

The boy nodded.

At that moment the [[SIV]]’s massive conduit tracks started ''rolling''.  

“Stand by: Incoming.”

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

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. They 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 an army 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; more ''volatile'', less predictable in their defensive manoeuvres.

They gamed out scenarios and learned the Irregulars manoeuvres as fast as they could change them up. Bundie clocked the insignia on the uniform — ''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 C-peashooters

The boys quickly p.  

The [[Structured investment vehicle|SIV]] anticipated his every move. It was 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 [[Present value|PV]]<nowiki/>s boiled into the atmosphere.

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.  

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

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.  

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.