Yes, he would watch this one carefully, she had promise.

* * *

Despite the ravages of recent history’s judgment, the French military is, in fact, one of the more effective and elite fighting forces on earth. In branches such as the French Foreign Legion, for example, most members of the rest of the world’s armed forces would quail at the levels of endurance and toughness required of the young officers and privates.

That said, Agent Jean-Paul Merard had not joined the Foreign Legion, not that he wouldn’t have been able to comfortably exceed even their strict standards. But Jean-Paul, like his seven other cohorts, wanted the fastest way to his target nation’s missile command. Combat experience was the key to getting there, and the elite Rafale fighter pilot division of the French army was one of the best ways for him to get it.

During his training he had made sure he showed especially high proficiency in both hand-eye coordination and tactical target selection, placing him on top of the list of his class’s candidates, and now he was profiting from that proficiency.

Arriving at the Dassault Rafale Training Base in southeastern France, he parked the small Citroën he had bought and went to survey his new environs. Complementing his vantage point was the AI satellite’s aerial view being sent to him via the relay in his car, and he followed various paths till he came out against the tall wire fence that hemmed in the actual fighter planes. Most of his initial classes would be in a simulator, but he wanted to see the storage place for the actual machines.

The Dassault Rafale was France’s answer to the Eurofighter, as the impatient country had dropped out of the development of that plane early to work on its own machine. It had managed to complete the plane nearly ten years earlier than the European consortium and the result had been small, sleek, and lethal. They were, in the opinion of Jean-Paul’s overlaid personality, a strange combination of primitive brutality and pure, functional beauty. The now space-born warcraft of his own race had long since become so distanced from the actual battle by the range of their weaponry that the concept of seeing your enemy through glass seemed at once terrible and wonderful.

Despite his machine soul, he could not help but think this was going to be … fun.

“Can I help you, sir?” said a French sergeant on regular patrol around the central landing and hangar facility. Though these training craft carried no functional weaponry, they were still $45 million each, and access to them was closely guarded even inside the base.

“Just looking at my new job.” said the pilot trainee, smiling at the sergeant and extending his hand. “Lieutenant Jean-Paul Merard, plaisir.”

The sergeant was surprised by the officer’s casual attitude, but he instinctively took the smiling man’s hand, the ice inevitably melting between them.