With the announcement of the parade, the military movements in the country increased even further as groups of soldiers began arriving in the city to start preparing the location the parade would be held, while others were being sent to Avalon Island.
What was weird was that none of them were practicing marching drills at all, making people wonder if it was being done in secret or if the soldiers were just going to be walking out of sync with each other. Maybe it was a result of the government rushing the parade, wanting it to happen while people were still relishing in their victory. That would naturally result in some neglect, but many had come to expect huge things from their government—especially when it came to the military—after the two consecutive victories they had pulled out of the jaws of anticipated defeat.
That assumption was amplified even further when an article talking about what kinds of weapons might show up during the parade. One of them was a very modern-looking, intimidating helicopter that had been seen in a video that looked like a continuation of the 1v5 between the Edenian lone fighter and Esparian squadrons.
The article had garnered much attention, as it came from the same reporters that published the video of the dogfight, resulting in many people starting to question where it'd come from.
Some people said it looked like a high-tech helicopter that was built thanks to data leaks from the US government caused by Chinese hackers. Others thought it was stolen by the PMC that guarded Eden, and now Esparia. A few thought that ARES had designed and developed their own helicopter, while still others speculated that it was just a good paint job that was used to disguise an already-existing helicopter.
Invites started rolling out from the Edenian government to the governments of every other country, as well as people who weren't politicians, but still had quite an influential position in the world. They wanted powerful businesspeople and many more to attend, since it wasn't just a military parade; rather, it was a day of celebration that included a parade.
"So, are you going to come?" Aron asked Rina as the two leisurely toured in the VR. When he'd logged in, he'd been informed of her being online and had decided to visit and talk with her.
"I should. I want to lay my eyes on your full forces, as I haven't seen them in their entirety. I only saw a small unit when they were protecting you," she replied, not hiding her excitement about the parade. She really wanted to see the mercenaries that had fought against a country's full-fledged military and won.
"Good. I'll send a team to pick you up and escort you to Eden. You shouldn't use your family's private jet, as that might attract more attention than we need," he said as they walked to a small hill overlooking some expansive, beautiful fields.
"Oh, you have your own jet?" she asked. She didn't recall having heard anything about it; the last time she had received information about Aron, he'd been traveling in a chartered jet.
"Not at the moment, but I should have a few by then," Aron cryptically answered, not giving a real explanation of where the fleet would be coming from.
"Sure. By the way, do you need me to help you retrieve your machine that was taken by the agency? I'm sure I can return it to you in a week, tops, if I use some of the connections built as a result of Ava's hard work," she said. She was still thankful for the new assistant, as she was immensely benefiting from having her by her side.
"No need. It's with DARPA now, not the FBI, but you don't need to do anything. It's exactly where I want it to be.... Plus, they won't be benefiting from it at all," Aron said with a smile that would make people think he was discussing something trivial.
"That's good, then," she said, followed by a few seconds of awkward silence. Then she finally found something to talk about and asked, "Now that you've completed the move to Avalon Island, are you planning on renouncing your American citizenship?"
"Not yet. Although keeping it means I'm still forced to pay American taxes, it should still benefit me for a few years before it becomes unnecessary," Aron answered, then continued, "How's the situation with your family competition?"
"Although nothing much has changed, my brother seems weirdly calm. At one point, I even asked Ava if anything weird was going on with him, but her response was that she has nothing that could be pinpointed as the cause of the change. It's just that the approximate time this change happened is somewhere around the time she was offline," Rina replied.
"Yeah about that... it was an oversight on my side, and it shouldn't happen again. We're expanding our server capacity to several magnitudes above what it was previously, so you can rest assured. But you should still be careful, as such a drastic change might mean something huge is coming your way." The moment Aron heard her explain her situation, his new intelligence senses started tingling. So he wasted no time in warning her to be careful, but also telepathically asked Nova to order the ARES members in his old neighborhood to delay their move to Eden and keep an eye on her. At least until she visited Eden; they could hitch a ride on the jet he would send to pick her up.n0velusb.c0M
"I'll make sure to keep an eye out," she replied with a sincere smile of happiness. "Are you going to be showing new weapons during the parade, or just the ones you had before the war?" she asked.
"We'll show some new ones, as that'll act as the launch and introduction of them to the world, but nothing fancy. Except for the helicopter—that one's an unplanned reveal, but since the cat's already out of the bag, it kind of forced our hand. At least we can use it to introduce the world to our advanced research capabilities, so people won't react aggressively in the future when the big guns come out," he answered, giving her a hint of what was going to be in the parade.
.......
"Here's the report, sir," Aubrey's assistant said as he handed him and George the preliminary report on ARES. It was all they could find in the short period of a few weeks; the research team was still working to gather more information.
The Morgan father-and-son pair wasted no time and opened the files, then carefully read them. They were extremely curious as to who might be behind the up-and-coming PMC.
"Why's everything in this garbage highlighted as nothing but speculation?" Aubrey raised his head and asked, dissatisfied by the report. Nearly everything in the document was highlighted as nothing but speculation or guesswork based on what little evidence they had collected in that period of time.
"Sir, the company has no history of being registered in or deployed to any country before they showed up in Eden. And the info there's under tight lockdown. ARES even acts as the INFOSEC (Information security) branch of the country, making it difficult to get any information about them.
"Nearly every bit of evidence we managed to collect during the past few weeks is from OSINT (Open Source Intelligence) through pictures and videos that were uploaded during the war from both the Eden and Esparian sides. And nothing about that gave us any details, making it impossible for us to know if any of our collected evidence is credible or not," the assistant said in a slightly worried tone.
"I'm sure the investigation team isn't dumb, but have they tried to get an inside man for more information?" George asked.
"Yes. We looked for people that we could say with some assurance have been members of the force for a longer period. But we couldn't even find a single one, so we had to deliver the preliminary report in such a vague way. But the upcoming parade should give us enough new and credible information to be able to at least pinpoint who they're affiliated with if we can track back the manufacturer or seller of the weapons that will be shown on the parade. That should be shown during the parade, as such a large number of them would at least leave a trail. Then we can use that trail to track who it might be connected to."
"Make sure the next report only has credible information. I don't want more speculation like in this shitty document," Aubrey said as he tossed the document on the table in front of them. He wasn't planning on continuing to read it, as unfounded nonsense wasn't something he should be tainting his head with.
"Yes, sir," the assistant replied and heaved a sigh of relief in his mind, then immediately left the room to deliver the new orders.
