Anyway, on my desk is a bunch of memos, again, and a very thick stack of after-action reports, causulty lists, tactical reports...huh. This is different.
"Yo, Sergeant!" I yell through my office door. Sergeant Bucky Buckster, my generally useful aide poked his head around the opening. "What up, Cap?"
"What is this?"
"Don't rightly know, Cap. Coffee?" he replied.
"Um. Sure."
I opened the binder, and the first page header leaps out at me: CAPTAIN LEE SARDE, C.O., B. CO., 17th TAC-STRIKE REGIMENT-THIS AND ALL FOLLOWING DOCUMENTS ARE CLASSIFIED CATEGORY "ALPHA-ONE/PRIORITY ONE".
Oh God....Oh God no...
A-1/P-1 restrictions are designators for the opening salvos in a war. Three months ago, we finished up a needless operation against this insane warlord who managed to cobble together mechs, and then raised Hell on a agri-tech world for about a year. My little cavalry regiment went in, thinking it would basically be a practice run, and we got bogged down for the next 8 months fighting off attacks from agarians in modified and armed farm tractors. My Company, Bravo, was really hard hit. We've been here on the Planet of the Apes because there's some pretty good wrench wenches and engineers here, and they agreed to repair and refit our mechs. We're not ready for more action just yet.
The next pages were nothing but a scream of horror. A colony out-world full of Space Amish were being attacked by infantry droids, insane mechs, and a whole passel of destructive machines, and no one knew why. Two divisions of ground infantry went in to contain and resolve the problem, and were subsequently obliterated in less then 24 hours. A mech light cavalry unit, like mine, engaged in a support op, and they too were destroyed. According to the AAR, every operation wound up fighting and losing in escalated attacks by these lunatics, and since we were the next closest unit, we were ordered by CENTCOM to deal with it.
"Sarge," I said. "Get me whoever is running Intel right now. And put some booze in my coffee. In fact, strike that. Bring me the coffee and the booze."
"Yo." he said. Ten minutes later, my Intel officer, 1LT Fizz, was fidgeting in the chair opposite my desk. He looked like a rabbit with ADD that was hopped up on pure crystal meth
.
"Okay, L.T.," I started. "You've read this?"
He blinked.
"I'll take that as a yes. Need a sec?"
"Oh...um...yeah. Okay, no." he answered.
"Tell me."
"Okay. The colony on planet Ammann is being attacked. Someone, we don't know who, decided to bring the Amish to glory of science and technology, and they parked a bunch of mechs and operators there with the intent to 'explain' things. But, the pilots were infected with some sort of nanotite/virus thing that was contagious and it affected mechs, and machines. Hell, it just infected everything that could possibly run on or use electricity. Including humans."
"This...affliction? What's it do? Like to people?" I asked.
"They call it 'robotulism'". he answered.
"Clever."
"Um. I guess. Anyway, it causes madness and the need to just destroy things. Or capture and infect them, or whatever. The nanotites repair the host, they turn off pain receptors, they enable this weird mind communication hive mind thing, and the infected just go crazy. The mechs, on the other hand, that's worse. It's like they get this sentient thing, and sometimes they go off by themselves to spread the infection. Fighting them is where it gets serious, because they are so hard to kill. Blow off their arms or legs, and they just crawl or drag themselves. They just need to touch you, and BOOM! You're infected."
"Any defense against it?" I asked.
"No, sir. Everything they use is infected. A grazing non-lethal hit infects you. You punch one, you're infected. A human touches you, you and/or your mech are infected. This disease, this robotulism, is very scary, very hard to contain, and because it's biomechanical, almost unkillable. It...scares...me." Lt. Fizz murmured.
"Sir?, he whimpered. "This is not okay."
I decided to just take a big swig straight from the whiskey. It burned, and felt good. I offered the bottle to my now terrified little lieutenant, who just shook his head and continued trembling. He was very right. Mech battles don't often end just because you destroy the mechs. The pilots can bail out and continue fighting with sidearms and light weapons if need be. All Army mech pilots, for example, are also trained infantry. But, if their very bullets could spread the infection, virtually everything was a vector for this contagion. They didn't even need to kill you. They just had to touch you, and they still won. I regarded my borderline hysterical intel officer.
"Lieutenant, do you like monkeys?" I asked. "There's a petting zoo here, and it has sheep, and doggies, and those rhino things you like. Why don't you take today and go to the zoo?"
He blinked rapidly. "May I, sir? That would be...nice."
I nodded in agreement, and he literally sprinted out in a flurry of papers and terror. This was going to be bad.
Submitted by Lee Sarde, #775296