2953-12-17 – Tales from the Service: The Occupiers’ Trap
The ten-minute ride across the city was, for Arthur Klimek, surreal an experience as sitting on the administration steps. Most of the places he remembered were intact, albeit most of the businesses looked like they’d been abandoned for years. There was almost no damage to the buildings, and the superficial Incarnation iconography was limited to banners, posters, and painted murals. Homecoming to a ghost town, he decided, had to be the worst form, even if it was also a triumphant return as a liberator. There was nobody to liberate.
The whole affair gave Arthur the distinct impression that the city, and Metzali as a whole, didn’t really want to be rescued. The Incarnation occupation of the planet had been a worthless diversion of resources better spent elsewhere, and it almost seemed like the planet knew that better than the F.V.D.A. generals who’d planned to retake it. If the empty streets could speak, they might be shouting at the convoy of personnel transports, telling them to go back, to let Metzali swallow its own intruders, until they were so enervated that a few hundred partisans from the hills could liberate their own spaceport.
That was ridiculous, of course. Metzali, remote as it was, was rich in mineral resources, resources that the Incarnation might be able to extract and use to fuel its war machine on this side of the Gap. Every such world they held represented an opportunity to reduce their dependence on running supply ships across the Gap, and they needed to be deprived of as many of those opportunities as possible. That was, anyway, the official line. No doubt after the war the armchair historians would have the final say.
When Arthur started seeing smoke up ahead, he knew they were close. Sure enough, the transport ahead of his slewed to the side and nosed into an alley to disgorge its troopers under cover. His own ride did the same with the next alley down, and the doors ground open. F.V.D.A. infantry transports weren’t designed to withstand heavy fire – they were little more than civilian wheeled movers with infantry-carrying boxes where their cargo beds had once been. They were armored against small arms fire, but nothing else.
Arthur’s squad piled out into the alley, where they found a dust-covered trooper wearing the insignia of the 851st waiting for them in the hollow socket of a vacant doorway. Arthur waved his soldiers into that doorway, and once everyone was inside, he clapped the guide on the shoulder and pulled him in as well. The transport would need to pull back out of the alley and head back for the landing area, and he didn’t want anyone out there if its driver miscalculated the maneuver.
“Glad to see you lot, Sergeant.” The 851st trooper shouted in Arthur’s ear over the roar of the transport’s engine. “We ran into heavy laser fire three blocks up. There’s a concrete building overlooking the whole area, and they’re holed up there and in all the surrounding buildings.”
Arthur nodded. “Heavy weapons?”
“We’ve had two transports knocked outby some sort of heavy emplaced laser, probably set up on the roof.”
Lasers, of course, were invisible between emitter and target, unless the atmosphere was thick with smoke and dust. They were also quieter than almost any other weapon. Unless someone was looking right at the weapon, and could see its meta-lenses flashing as they tuned the beam, such weapons could be notoriously stealthy.
“Upstairs wants your company to sidle left and advance along...” The man checked the text on a battered digital screen on his wrist. “Imogen Street.”
Arthur started. “Eh?”
“Imogen Street.” The man pointed to the left. “Two streets that way. Most of the signs are still-”
“Big concrete building?”
“Yeah, weren’t you listening?”
“They’re holed up in the Rawlins Agriculture compound?” Arthur put his hand on the man’s arm. “You must be joking, trooper.”
“Er... yeah, it does say Rawlins on the building. Why-”
“Tell your captain that place is a trap.”
“Trap?” The dusty trooper looked at Arthur as if he were mad.
“Didn’t anyone stop to think of why a farm supply company needs concrete walls more than a meter thick?”
The dusty trooper shook his head mutely. Behind him, the transport rolled out of the alley and the sound of its engine dwindled into the distance.
“It’s a fertilizer factory. Synthetic fertilizer is basically just granulated explosives mixed with bad smells. They’re going to draw us in, then blow the place.”
The other man’s eyes widened, and Arthur belatedly noticed some of his own men were listening in.
He scowled at them and waved them back in the other direction; they all had work to do, securing the building, establishing contact with any other friendly forces within earshot, and getting their comms gear locally synced with the 851st's tac-net. Most of the squad shrugged and ambled off, at least pretending to take the hint.
“I’ll, uh.” The dusty 851st trooper stammered. “I’ll pass that intel along, Sarge.”
“Damned right you will.” Arthur shook his head and stalked away to find a quiet spot to report up to his own superiors as well. They might send his squad in anyway, but they’d damned well better do it only after they knew the score.
The recapture of Metzali is, in the grand scheme of this conflict, a very minor event, with very small forces contributed by both sides. That being said, I thought it important for the account which will take us up to the Feast to be one that demonstrates the competence and grit of Confederated forces.
As we go into this holiday week, I wish to assure all of you at home, be it in the Core Worlds or in the still-free systems of the Coreward Frontier, that your safety is in good hands. The Navy, Marines, F.V.D.A., and other services waging this war on two fronts are working tirelessly to end the threat of Incarnation aggression, and in the meantime to keep that threat as far away from as many of you as possible.