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Strategos (A Great Captain Roberts Tale!!)
Chapter 10 - Something Alien[]
The new arrivals…
…didn't come down in DropShips, nor did they deploy 'mechs to secure the spaceport, nor did they issue orders or demands from orbit.
Instead, an array of smallcraft type shuttles came down, and released a group of the smallest 'mechs anyone on Johnson had ever seen, along with some light ground vehicles and even smaller 'mechs, more sized like men.
Cas Loane watched them from one of the old city's towers. Everything had the same markings, the equipment was uniform, these were from not merely the same unit, but from a unit that had enough support infrastructure to build a regular force of tiny 'mechs, armored space suits, and armored vehicles in quantity.
There was something else about them too…
They grounded their craft in a formation, and established a perimeter The Vehicles parked in a pattern, and then, spread out, men moved in groups and lines along the flight-line and runway, doing a FOD sweep-a practice the Sons used captives and hostages for.
Only after that, did the orbiting fighter craft come down, keeping two up and two on the ground.
"We'll have to fetch the mayor, they're setting up a garrison." Caswell noted.
"We confirmed…
…a fairly large population concentration in the outskirts of the old colony city, and signs of looting toward the city center." Captain Roberts was explaining. "The airborne squad confirms someone tore out the municipal fusion plant, and did it in an orderly fashion, and didn't replace it with anything. Whoever did, also dismantled the distribution and filtration assembly that SHOULD be servicing a city with enough housing for over a quarter million people. These folks are living on water with organic and inorganic pollutants because whoever did the tear-down took off with the filters at the city water district…but there's heat trace and signs of a rural population clustered around some temporary field units that look pretty rough even from orbit."
Khan Alberto Crow looked dubious on the imager. "So a population forced into barbarism…because that is what you led off with, quiaff?"
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Snow Raven Khan, Alberto Crow
"That is correct sir. This is hard evidence. Someone ripped a twenty four thousand Megawatt municipal power plant and filtration system out and left the people to survive on whatever was left, they also took machine tooling and support infrastructure for agricultural equipment."
She tabbed images shot from orbit, and patrol pictures taken by portable drones.
"Where are the people then?"
"Hiding." she asserted. "There are a couple of mass grave sites off the north runway, spade-work, not bulldozers, and enough DNA trace in the blast shields on the flight line to match impact scarring from generations of bullets. The population here's been terrorized for a long time by someone who arrives, takes from them, kills a few, and leaves. Under those conditions, strangers are going be hidden from; at least, at first."
"Trust." Alberto said.
"That is my recommendation, Sir."
"Desmond concurs, quiaff?"
"Yes, Desmond also thinks we need at least a full Cluster of your warriors to reassure these people the Bandits that have been doing this won't be able to do it to them again." she stated. "As for the value…The habitable world is a difficult transit in, making it a good bolt-hole for Bandits, which is something we want to deny them. This also makes the system a good choice for a forward garrison and charging station-because entry can be controlled more easily than is the norm. Someone else thought so too, we found the wreckage of an Olympus, it's not recoverable except as raw materials, but at some point, when they were still building Olympus class charging stations, Johnson was considered a good location for one."
Crow was making notes, then spoke off camera with the mic muted, before turning back. "I will pass your recommendation on to President Avellar." he said, "Civil infrastructure is his burden, military is mine. The positioning is sound, we will establish a forward operations base for Kappa galaxy in the Johnson system, expect relief in forty days."
"Thank you, Sir."
Alberto Crow sat in silence after the HPG relay ended.
"Acton?" he said.
Acton Howe, Loremaster for Clan Snow Raven paused in the doorway. "Aff?"
"Get your propaganda department on the downloads, I want every household in the Alliance arguing about how much relief to send to the worlds in the wasteland. Not 'if' relief is to be sent, but how much."
"Just relief?"
"Military relief. I want them arguing about whether we hang the bandits, or disembowel them first." Alberto clarified. "Drums of war, Acton. I want every civilian in our territory foaming at the mouth over what she found, ready to haul off and throw rocks if we don't move fast on this." He met his Loremaster's eyes, "Make the civilians, the pacifist civilians, so angry they're lining up to enlist to kill bandits. Am I understood? Is that clear enough for you? Get them so angry they're volunteering to work overtime for no pay to drive a stake into the heart of the Bandits out there. It's time to release the data gathered at Devil's Breath and Tresspass and Joan's Post to the public, understand me now?"
"What changed?"
"What changed, is that we can not afford to sit on the sideline." Crow explained quietly. "And, what has changed, is that nothing facilitates social conversion better, than a war that feels like justice to the average civilian, so get the best minds in the propaganda section going full blast, I think even Mitch Avellar will agree this needs to be a higher priority in the public's mind."