12th September 2025, 2300 Hours. Libya. Africa Command Center of the Halifax Security and Defense Contractor. Command Center.
The system on that command cente你好r had finished rebooting up, but the software on that system was quite corrupted. In short, their command was crippled.
"MMS&HSDC Command System? I don't remember that our system was named like that."
"What does MMS mean anyway? Never heard of that, sir," Sarah said as her teams were trying to delete the malware that suddenly existed on their system.
[Modern Military System Rebooting. Please Standby]
"If anybody did this prank, I swear to god that she/he will be demoted to Private," Lawrence looked at the screen of that command center.
[Detecting Another System. Merging...]
'This is ridiculous. What if the Americans have arrived in our doorsteps now?' Lawrence waited for that nonsense to stop.
[HSDC&MMS System]
Level: 40
Personnel available: 9,000,000
Land Vehicle:100,000
Water Vehicle: 10,000
Air Vehicle: 45,000
Warning! Due to the errors on the Satellite, all available manpower has been reduced to 10%. Navy is unavailable.
[Rebooting]
'Same as always. I'm glad to see that,' Lawrence looked at the explanation of that system. Basically, all he had was the personnel on the surrounding area of Libya and nowhere else. He lost contact with the main base on the Pacific and Atlantic.
"I want the 24th Fighter Wing to scramble with their Su-27Ss, we need to find what's going on," Lawrence told them. The air force commanding officers immediately told the commander of that unit to scramble his fighter jets.
"Aye sir, the unit will be ready in five minutes," One of them said.
"Ok, I want the 98th Recon Wing to scramble their SR-72s ASAP. They might provide us with some vital information," Lawrence said.
"Aye, sir," One of them said.
"I want 3 armor companies to be guarding the perimeter at all times."
"Yes, copy that sir."
Lawrence walked from his command desk. He walked to the head of the engineer of Africa Theater, General Sarah Beeren.
She stood up beside her desk, "General, mind if you come outside with me?"
"Sure, sir."
Sarah stood up from her desk and headed outside of the command center. They walked outside of the command center and Lawrence immediately asked Sarah a question about what was going on.
"General, so how's the situation?"
"Sir, according to the engineers' report, most of the electrical equipment on the base was shut down. A little bit of minor fix here and there and we got the electrical grid running again," Sarah said.
"So, we just got malware attacked?"
"I believe so sir, but we haven't found out what kind of malware was it or what kind of method that was used to inject that malware," Sarah answered.
"Still, that doesn't thoroughly explain why there was a demi-human on this base," Lawrence answered.
"And that doesn't explain most of the pain that we have suffered," Sarah said.
"How's the satellite? How long will it take to get it up and running again?" Lawrence asked.
"It will be online in 12 hours sir, from then, we will have our whole chain of command back," Sarah said.
"Keep me, updated General," Lawrence headed back to the command center.
And again, they headed back to the command center. It didn't take too long until Lawrence got the reports back from the reconnaissance flight. The SR-72 had given them the pictures on the surrounding area although the condition was very dark.
"Sir, we have gotten pictures on the surrounding area," One of the commanding officers said and she showed Lawrence bunch of pictures on her computer.
The pictures were the usual desert on Libya, but as they got closer and closer to Tripoli, anomaly could be sighted. Lawrence knew that the view of the city in Libya could either be rubble on the city or a traditional desert house.
But not this time, it was full of a building that Lawrence will call ancient. There were lots of traditional desert building and most of its occupants were wearing traditional desert clothing or Toga, not a t-shirt or shirt or anything resembled modern clothing.
Not stopping there, as the SR-72 flew closer to Tripoli, the location of one of their main naval base, the buildings on that city weren't resembling a desert building, they had more similarities to the building that were built by the Romans.
On the main naval base, ships were parked strangely on the shoreline of the city. Not stopping there, some of the ships were firing at the city although Libya was under HSDC control the whole time.
"Sir, are we in 2025?"
"Keep looking."
The SR-72 were flying around the coastline of Libya and Egypt. They were taking pictures there and Lawrence realized something was missing. 'Are we really in 2025?' most of the building there wasn't from 2025, and the citizens there weren't resembling 2025 citizens at all.
'Romans building, demi-human, sudden system failure, and communication is down, what kind of phenomenon we've been through?' Lawrence looked at the cities on the shoreline of Libya.
"Sir..." Lawrence was staring at the computer screen quietly as he tried grasping the situation. He was concerned whether the Americans had used biological weapons on them or all they had seen was true.
"No, Captain, I don't want to come to that conclusion yet," Lawrence left that table and went back to his command desk. He opened his computer and tracked the troop's movement. He wanted to find one Americans at the very least.
He looked at the blips on his computer that indicates the troop movements. The tank companies were circling around the base for patrol. There wasn't any sign of contact yet, but Lawrence was waiting for it since he expected the US to attack at any given moment.
A square popped up on his computer, it was a message from Dimitri, "Boss, who is this girl?"
"Lise?"
"Yeah."
"A refugee. End of the question bruh."
"Ok."
Suddenly, there was a warning from one of the blips on the tactical map. It was from one of the tank companies. The whole base went to full alert immediately. Weirdly enough, the reconnaissance squadron didn't spot any armor units that were charging to their base.
"SCRAMBLE ALL WINGS AND DEPLOY ALL ARMORED UNIT AT MULTIPLE DIRECTION!"
"YES, SIR!"
The commanding officers on that base went to full panic mode and started sending out their units to the frontline. Tanks and armored vehicles were sent to the front lines and planes were taking off from the runway to fight the adversaries.
Lawrence didn't realize something, it was a heavy overkill from his command. Yes, the tanks have contact, but that contact wasn't exactly contacted per se.
"Sir, we got a report from the tank commander!"
"Move it to the speaker!"
"Abort contact. This isn't a hostile, just a delegation."
"What do you mean? Captain, please explain," Lawrence heard the speaker.
"Sir, we have a visual on the hostile, but it's not hostile. He's wearing some sort of Roman-era clothing. He tried shouting something, sir."
"Go on."
"Sir, this is not a US soldier. He's a delegation from the Brigantine empire. Sir, should I take him to the base?"
'What on earth is happening here? From the random encounter of a demi-human to the sudden change of ages? This is very confusing, to be honest,' Lawrence thought for an appropriate response. He needed to decide whether he was a US spy or not.
"Ok, bring him to the guard post."
"Copy that sir, ETA 180 seconds."
Lawrence waited and waited for that captain to give him the delegation from the Brigantine empire. After three minutes, Lawrence got the confirmation from the captain. He said that the delegation had been placed on the guard post.
Lawrence got out of the command center and Dimitri was waiting for him outside of that command center. He laid his back on the wall of the command center. "So, why are you getting out of the CC?"
"There's a delegation from the Brigantine empire? What should I do? Kill him?" Lawrence asked Dimitri.
"Fair enough, take my car?" Dimitri asked.
"Yeah, agree," Lawrence entered Dimitri's Humvee and they drove to the guard post located across the command center. Well, it was far enough that it would take minutes to arrive there.
***
A guard post. Just a usual guard post with sandbags and machine-gun nests. The only difference was a tank, M1 Abrams, that the captain used was parked there. On top of the tank, there was two-person, the captain itself, and a person that was wearing a Toga and sat on top of the turret.
The captain jumped from the tank, "Sir, Reporting!"
"Captain, is this the delegation?" That Toga person jumped from the top of the tank and approached him. He grabbed a scroll from the inside of his Toga.
"Captain, you're dismissed. Return to your duty immediately."
"Sir, yes sir," the captain jumped inside his tank again and the tank was reversed and left the base.
'Now, what should we do with him?'