A Cut Above, A Breed Apart

They strolled into the mess hall nonchalantly in dress blacks that had the exact opposite effect of their understated design. The crowd opened up for them, the same thought flashing through the entire room.

The corporation's special forces were the stuff of legends, men and women who pushed the envelopes of both unit cost and cost-effectiveness. Multi-billion-dollar investments, each and every one of them, and not a single question of their value.

Quite possibly more machine than man, more hardware than wetware, more than biological in many different interpretations of the phrase. The latest step in the long road of human enhancement that began when the first of our biological ancestors picked up a spear to wield against a long-dead foe.

Not that warfare had much in common with such inelegance in the current age. Today's warfare was calculated, measured - subtle plays of resource management. Warfare is a numbers game, a test of the conviction behind words, the commitment of force to carry out a threat.