Also listed are hypervelocity missiles and antitank mines that use octocellulose explosives capable of killing a Deng Heavy if placement of the charge is done properly. They are more than capable of inflicting serious damage to me, particularly to my treads. Given the government’s lack of willingness to fund anything beyond politically necessary subsidy payments, this is of concern.
I monitor the departure of the emergency tactical team from Nineveh Base. Fifty federal troops swarm aboard a heavy airlift transport, armed with weaponry suitable for infantry combat. The sole exception is a robot-tank designed to penetrate hostile terrain, which is maneuvered into the cargo bay prior to lift-off. The transport lumbers into the air and picks up speed, streaking south through the darkness. Even at maximum velocity, they may be too late. The deployment of rebel troops indicates a level of military training superior to that displayed by the federal troops. Granted, this would not be difficult to achieve…
As I watch through the surveillance cameras, unable to intervene, the invaders storm every building in the compound, methodically killing every government trooper they encounter. They shoot men down, execution style, whether they try to surrender or flee. Within eight point three minutes the rebel contingent has completely overrun the outpost and has destroyed every federal trooper unlucky enough to be assigned there.
Once the killing is done, there is no sign of celebration amongst the victors. They move smoothly from attack-mode to organized looting, firing up military trucks in the vehicle park. The compound, situated at the top of a steep, northward-facing bluff, holds a commanding view of the valley where government-owned farms have been installed. There are two main access roads, one which snakes upward from the valley floor in a series of switchbacks along the bluff’s western face and one which loops a longer way around, approaching from the south along a gentler gradient.
Fast-working rebel crews take down the fences along both roads, allowing trucks loaded with spoils to escape into the darkness without slowing down to exit single file through the gates. These trucks are piled high with ammunition crates, small arms, missiles, antitank mines, and rocket launchers.
They clearly have a lengthy campaign in mind. This is an enemy worth studying closely. Most are young, under the age of twenty. The older men and women have the gaunt, angry look of farmers stripped of their holdings in the government’s land-snatch program and forced to work on meagre rations in government-owned fields. I recognize their leader immediately. Anish Balin is an intelligent, disgruntled firebrand who has graduated from talking the talk to walking the walk. His widely disseminated notion of justice is Biblicaclass="underline" an eye for an eye and slavery for the enslavers.
I do not see how exchanging one form of coercion for another will materially improve conditions. This is the tragedy of bitter conflicts within a divided society: one side’s hatred leads to atrocities that fuel the other side’s hatred, sparking angry reprisals which fuel new hatred, ad infinitum. I have never fought in a civil war. I know how to crush an enemy or die trying, but I do not know how to end a conflict between diametrically opposed philosophies in a struggle to decide how a human society will conduct itself.
My processors cannot resolve this problem. Safety algorithms shut down the attempt. I cannot intervene without orders and I cannot decide what the proper course would be, even if I could; not without human guidance and specific orders within the parameters of my overall mission. I can only sit and watch and wait for someone to tell me what to do. I am unhappy to be caught in the same mental state as the troopers just slaughtered.
The emergency tactical team arrives, providing a distraction from my psychotronic distress. The air transport sets down half a kilometer south of the compound, along the easier access gradient, blocking the way for three trucks. These trucks back and turn, making a successful escape while the federal airship is still off-loading troops. Evidently, none of the crew or troopers on board understand the concept of air-to-truck missiles. Or know how to use them. The munitions in the escaping trucks are of concern, but the far greater worry I harbor involves the heavy-artillery field guns listed on the equipment rosters. I have seen no sign of these guns in the loads of contraband driven out, which I find puzzling. Surely ten mobile Hellbores would constitute a greater prize than a few truckloads of ordnance?
So far as I can determine though my datatap on the security cameras, the truck drivers are heading for the twisting, turning canyons that riddle the Damisi Mountains. The southern ranges surrounding Barran Bluff are wild, neither mined nor farmed. This region constitutes perfect country for hiding a rebel army. If I were a human, my heart would sink at the prospect of trying to come to grips with an enemy scattered through the long, deeply fissured Damisi Mountains. I fear that this will eventually become my task, if this raid is not speedily and successfully squelched. Given the lax training of federal troops in general — what few troops remain, other than the ubiquitous P-Squads and other urban law-enforcement units — I am less than optimistic that this raid will be successfully countered.
The troops aboard the airship finally off-load, fanning out in a formation that makes little sense to me, since it is neither an effective attack formation nor a sensible defensive one. They simply string themselves out in a line to either side of their air transport and watch while the robot-tank lumbers toward the main gate of the Barran Bluff compound. They make no effort to prepare their rifles for combat readiness nor do they bother to switch on their headsets, which are designed to relay tactically important data and command-grade orders in an organized, centrally directed fashion.
The overriding attitude seems to be one of complacent arrogance.
The robot-tank is thirty meters from the main gate when the rebels holding Barran fling open the doors on a field-artillery depot. A mobile Hellbore drives out into the open, swinging around the tank-traps in the road to gain a vantage point that covers the main, south-facing gate. The 10cm barrel swings around, locks on, and fires. The night vanishes. Actinic light burns shadows into the painted walls of the bunkers and storage depots. Recoil sends the Hellbore’s mobile platform backwards five meters. The blast slices the robot-tank open like a tin can. Smoke billows up from the mortally wounded vehicle, pieces of which are blown in several directions.
Federal troops break and run for their air transport.
Before any of them can reach it, that transport vanishes in another blinding flash. Pieces of semimolten metal go careening off into the darkness, blazing like meteors. Fragments scythe down the low-growing native shrubbery. The overpressure and expanding fireball engulf the remaining federal troops. Granger ground forces rush forward, sighting with laser range-finders and shooting what few bodies are still twitching.
They fall back, then, and continue loading trucks.
Sar Gremian, watching the debacle courtesy of my datafeed to the president’s console, stares in wide-eyed shock. He then snarls several obscenities and contacts Nineveh Base. “Scramble another team. And this time, goddamn it, go in with aerial fighters and missiles!”