“Ladies.  Gentlemen.  Welcome to Operation 8.  I am not going to waste time talking about our importance, what we do, or why we do it.  This isn’t some welcome aboard pep talk.  That was all a part of why you decided to be here, you know these things.  First I’ll talk about what our goal is, in the most general sense.  In short:  We’re changing the landscape of how we operate, we being the countries that vie for peace and order.  We will not be securing resources for the financial benefit of a leader.  We will not be destabilizing countries to open way for financial mining.  That’s all going on.  

We are changing the landscape at this level.  We need enemies of peace to know that when something just is to be done, and our militaries and politics will not allow it, or heads of state spend months jockeying for position and that leaves people open to harm--something will be done.  

You will not be doing this for praise, or awards, or to see yourself in the paper.  Some of you will die and never be spoken of.  Your families will be told you died in an exercise, or in combat fighting for your respective country.  That is what you signed on for.

While this does sound noble, rest assured, it is not going to be easy.  Some of you will be embedding yourselves among the people you despise to do deplorable things.  You’ll be in places you loathe, in conditions that are awful, sometimes doing things for reasons you are not, nor will ever be, aware of.  Contact may be limited to the point you doubt what you’re doing or wonder if you’ve gone too far.  

Nothing I can say now or then will make those thoughts or realities go away.  So.  I won’t speak of it.

In closing, we’re a team and on the subject of teams, I want to introduce a handful of people.  First, myself.  I’m Lieutenant Colonel Pete Bitterns, United States Army.  In short, I’m calling the shots, you all answer to me.  All orders come from me.  

Second in command and field officer is Major Ed Myong.  He will speak for me, be informed and involved with decision making and debriefs, and also occasionally deploy on ground when necessary.  He is a Major with the South Korean Military and has been involved with police actions there as well.

Next, we have out intel officer, Lieutenant Jain Ogranda, South African Defense Force.  

This is Lieutenant Yuri Bragamov, formerly with the KGB and Ukrainian Airborne and he’s the comm officer.

We then have Sergeant Cedric Pines, United States Army, Airman First Class from France Julia Moreau, and Corporal Makkid Mawlik, United States Marines.  These individuals we be manning comm traffic, intel, gathering data and monitoring maps and feeds.  

Behind you, you see The Den.  This is where we’ll be while you are all out in the shit.  We have 2 vans to go mobile, we have air assets for when we need to move and access to everywhere we need to be...or at least very close to where we need to be.  

Lastly.  We’re obviously a small group.  This is borderline a breach of what I should be sharing with you, but Operation 8 is a pilot initiative.  Depending on results, other teams may be instituted in hopes of being able to deploy assets to multiple theaters at once.  As we are only one team, we are limited to one theater of operation at a time.  So don’t fuck this up.

Ladies, gentlemen, have a look around, get familiar with one another.  Dismissed.”