There must have been a thousand or so people clashing. This certainly fit my requirements of being out after curfew and armed. There was gunfire and chainsaws and lots and lots of blood.
“Stop fighting and return to your homes!” I bellowed through a bullhorn.
It’s pretty tough to stop a war by talking at it so I didn’t really expect much.
I turned back to my Militia, which stretched as far as I could see.
“Okay,” I said, “go kill them all.”
I wasn’t sure how much prodding or instructions I would have to give. The answer was none.
They surged past my heavy lifter, some even climbing up and over, all screaming and waving their sticks. I had seemingly forgotten that a lot of the Royal Wing inmates were violent criminals. The most violent of violent criminals—who were dumb enough to get caught and disliked enough to not have any friends or powerful gang affiliations.
They might not have been born for this, but they were subsequently molded for it.
When they had gone past, I noticed about a dozen of my Militia had been trampled. You knew you had enthusiastic soldiers when not even running over their own men could slow them down from engaging enemies that had vastly more killing power.
The Order and Republic had not listened to me and my silly bullhorn.
But they noticed the rapidly approaching Militia. Fighting halted completely for about six seconds. I think I could have gotten the Order and Republic to sign an everlasting, ironclad peace agreement in those six seconds.
If I could have magically stopped my Militia in its tracks.
But I could not, and the Militia barreled into the well-fed, well-armored, well-equipped, elite forces of Belvaille and began beating them mercilessly with plastic rods.
They traded in their sticks for chainsaws and guns when opportunities presented themselves. It was carnage.
“You…” Busange started, standing next to my heavy lifter, “should stop them.”
This was a guy with no ears and one eye, a spokesman for a gang called “The Murderers,” and he was witnessing something that made him squeamish.
It was a full-on massacre. There was no way to stop it. I said kill them all and they were going to kill them all.
I learned my greatest lesson in politics right there. Religion and ethnicity and history and territory were all fine things to fight about. But the Militia was fighting for their very lives. They had nothing to lose and absolutely everything to gain.
It wasn’t even a close fight.
“Well, find out who’s alive and dead,” I told Busange, when the killing had died down to a mild hum.
“I’m not going over there!” He said. “You saw what they did with just your stupid sticks. Now they got guns!”
CHAPTER 62
I wasn’t entirely sure how many people we lost because I wasn’t entirely sure how many we started with.
We guessed around 300 had fallen on our side. That’s 300 prisoners to their 1000 Order and Republic soldiers.
The good news was I suspected the most insane, bloodthirsty ones were the majority of our dead. Because they were the first ones in, the ones not protecting themselves, the ones the enemy realized they had to put down immediately.
The sneaky ones who sat at the back and let their comrades take the brunt of the blows were survivors. A few more conflicts like this and I’d be left with nothing but the perfect citizens for Belvaille.
I couldn’t deny I was being rather heartless about it all.
But I had talked myself stupid and gotten nowhere with these factions. I had a chance to effect some real change with the Confederation but it wouldn’t work if we still had the Totki and other groups having the power to do what they wanted without consequence. There weren’t enough Kommilaire to arrest them all or even threaten them now that they were out in force.
They had to be destroyed, or at the very least, broken.
I locked down the telescopes and stopped the factions from broadcasting. I didn’t want them rallying outside support and spewing more hate as we made this final push.
We rode out against several more assemblies of Order and Republic, smashing them to pieces each time and suffering a small amount of casualties.
The street riots, the ones composed of just regular people who had seized the opportunity to cause problems, went away instantly. Once they got word that I was driving around with thousands of Royal Wing Militia, armed with beat sticks, and smacking people to death… well, it wasn’t so exciting to be out after curfew anymore.
Besides, the economy had turned around dramatically because of the overall rise in the markets. Companies were hiring and there was money to be made—without the risk of getting mutilated in the process.
I hoped to encounter the Totki, because out of the three big groups, their leader was still alive and ranting. But Hong was craftier than I had thought. The Totki almost completely disappeared once the Militia began its activities. Now that I finally wanted them out in the streets, they weren’t obliging.
The Republic members were harder to find since they were spread throughout the city, but the Order had numerous blocks that were strictly their own.
Two weeks after I started my crusade, we pushed into the Sublime Order of Transcendence’s part of the city.
My Militia had a number of former Order members and they translated the messages of their robe-wearing, chanting brethren for me.
It seemed Hobardi had placed great significance, religious significance, on his death and now all the remaining Order followers were standing around waiting for the Amazing Thing.
That was literally the term they used, which was a pretty stupid name, if you asked me. Presumably this was a section of the religion that Hobardi hadn’t put much thought into as he hadn’t been planning on dying so soon.
Everyone knew Hobardi was dead, killed by me and Valia at the Temple, though they didn’t know it was only a clone. The real Hobardi’s location was unclear to me. He could be in my Belvaille Militia, standing not thirty feet back, unwashed and unshaved. But all indications were he was dead.
The Order members lit candles and struck gongs and danced and meditated and drew symbols on themselves.
Fine.
But they still had their special forces teams. I talked to some who talked to some and passed me to others until I was in a room with about five well-armed Order men. They looked like a combination of Colmarian Navy soldiers and priests.
“Hobardi is dead,” I told them. “What are you still fighting for? The religion was crap anyway.”
“How dare you!” Their Captain screamed. He was the leader of the military wing of the Order and he took it all seriously. He was so serious he made MTB look like a singing juggler by comparison. The red veins in his eyes almost pulsed.
“We still have instructions from the Grandmaster and we shall see them carried out!”
I looked at his men. They clearly didn’t share his zeal, but weren’t overtly tipping their hands. I couldn’t negotiate with a loon. Hobardi was easier than this guy. At least Hobardi knew he was a joke.
This soldier was wearing a significant suit of body armor. Not even sure how he moved around, but it was going to be impervious to nearly any of my guns unless I shot him in the face.
“Excuse me,” I said, walking past one of the soldiers.
The man moved back as I approached the Captain.
I put my fingers down the front of his armor by the neck, wiggling them to get purchase.
“Stop it! What are you doing?” the Captain exclaimed.
I put the fingers of my other hand down the back of his armor.
I then pulled my arms apart and ripped his body armor off like the shell of a nut. I did that to let the others know that their cool armor wasn’t significant to me. I held the rather startled Captain with my left hand and put a pistol to his chest.