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Itty Bitty Bigger World - Big Damn Heroes
Dec. 24th, 2019 01:13 pmItty Bitty Bigger World - Big Damn Heroes
Every generation complains about the youth.
I think my generation, the generation that actually saw the implementation of the Protocols, has the most right to complain, of any generation before us.
We eliminated poverty. We eliminated war. Crime is still a thing, but it's rare that a criminal kills someone, and we haven't had to execute anyone in over a decade. Nobody is hungry. Anyone who wants something has a reasonable shot at getting it.
It didn't happen overnight. It didn't happen easily. The work still continues today.
These kids are _spoiled_.
###
"Time to target, four minutes."
Everyone in the drop shuttle including myself was in powered battle armor. We needed to be. There were only twenty four of us, and just the one site we were tasked with contained over twenty thousand people.
"Interdiction," warned a metallic voice as a brilliant streak of light slammed down from the sky.
Apparently some local air defense unit either hadn't obeyed orders to stand down, or hadn't gotten the message. Now they weren't a factor, and a little light labeled "threat radar" winked out.
We were dropping with drones, of course. But drones were best in situations where there was some structure, and us humans were here to provide some of the reconfiguration.
"Bilyad Prison, Bilyad Prison, emergency message, life and death, life and death," said the operator. The software obligingly translated it to Mandarin Chinese, Pinyin dialect. There weren't any frequency issues, our directional beam to the complex was on all frequencies. People were probably hearing it on the fillings in their teeth.
"Bilyad Prison, respond immediately, life and death, abandon the perimeter towers immediately."
A recon drone lazily overflew the site, nearly invisible to our sensors and unseeable by a mere human on the ground. It fed our total information awareness systems, both the shuttles and our armor's.
Additional information flooded in from the combat drones, each of which was locked on to a particular tower along the twelve kilometer perimeter of the earth berm square that was Bilyad Prison.
We also had locks on the gatehouse and both main gate towers adjacent. I was willing to blow the towers, but I wanted the gatehouse. Among other things it would contain duty rosters.
"No reply," the communications specialist said, needlessly.
"Working clockwise from the main gate, illuminate the gate towers, visual light, about one per second, until all are lit. Execute," I ordered.
I was in command of this evolution. And I hated to kill people needlessly. But I would.
As the lights snapped on, one by one, one of the guard towers showed sparks as someone with a cold iron automatic rifle tried to fire on us.
"Destroy…" I said, but before I finished, the tower blew up. One of the drones had made an AI decision.
"On speakers, on frequencies. ATTENTION. BILYAD PRISON. Guards will ABANDON the towers and will go to the GATEHOUSE right now! Guards drop your weapons or you will be fired upon without warning! This prison is now under the control of Protocol Enforcement and resistance will be met immediately with deadly force!"
I paused.
"GET OUT OF THE TOWERS, WE ARE BLOWING THEM UP."
I added quietly, without turning off the hailers, "Working from the one we just blew up, one per second, change the visible light to red, clockwise, then when you get back to the tower we just blew up, start blowing them up, one per second. Do not engage anyone trying to get out of a tower."
The weapons technician nodded, bit her lip, and set it up.
I will say this for the guard forces. Less than a third of them abandoned their towers before the red illumination. All of the survivors - by definition - did abandon their towers by the second circuit, because the towers didn't exist any more.
"PRISONERS, THIS IS A RESCUE. STAY WHERE YOU ARE. GUARDS, DROP YOUR WEAPONS, ASSEMBLE AT THE FRONT GUARDHOUSE."
"Sir, distress signal from the prison, HF transmitter, calling Brigade for instructions. Brigade is not answering."
"Loudhail off. Spoof Brigade, order them to surrender to Protocol Enforcement."
"Done."
"Land adjacent to the gatehouse. Air defense interdiction to maximum. If a squirrel or a sparrow looks like it might be looking at us, vaporize it."
This was the most vulnerable moment. We hadn't been able to confirm if the prison contained any swivvers. Brilliant missiles, hand held, that could kill the shuttle and all twenty four of us, if we couldn't hack it fast enough.
"DROP DROP DROP" ordered the jumpmaster and our twelve person squad of Protocol Marines separated from the cargo bay and spread out, weapons hot and ready for anything.
Nothing.
We landed, the pilot and analyst and comm specialist would stay at their posts. The rest of us dismounted: a four person security group, two battle surgeons, a logistician, a Protocol specialist, and myself.
The two battle surgeons had red markings on their white battlesuits. As you watched, the shoulder markings rotated between a Red Cross, Red Crescent and Red Diamond. The Red Diamond stayed on the center of the back and above the foreheads. They were unarmed but carrying bulky armored boxes of medical supplies.
The rest of us were heavily, heavily armed.
"Gatehouse, get the rosters," I ordered the logistician. "Hold up on the infirmary, not quite yet. Let's get most of these guards secured. I see an officer, let's see if I can get his help."
I raised my outer faceplate so that my face would be visible through the inner transparency.
"Brevet Captain Anderson, Protocol Enforcement. Who are you?" I asked the Chinese prison officer.
"You have no jurisdiction here! Get in your craft and go away!"
One of the security specialists bracketed the Chinese officer with a mass stunner. One wrong move and he'd go down twitching.
Another mass stunner was targeted on the stunned, mostly unarmed mass of guards starting to assemble by the gatehouse. They were so conditioned to following orders that for lack of anything else to do, they'd obeyed.
They weren't going to hurt Protocol armor with rifles. But they could hurt prisoners, which is what we wanted to avoid.
"Protocol has accepted a habeus corpus warrant on behalf of all persons in custody in this province," the Protocol specialist added, unhelpfully. It presumed a level of education in Western legal theory that the officer likely did not have.
"Not your prisoners anymore. Our prisoners. They are ALL in Protocol Enforcement custody until their status can be further adjudicated. You have two choices, you can cooperate with us or you can wake up in a few hours in restraints. Your decision."
"This is illegal…" the Chinese officer began, and suddenly fell down to start his involuntary nap.
"Guards, no one will be harmed as long as you do what we say," I began.
It was mostly a lie.
This was a war crimes interdiction, after all.
"Got the rosters," the logistician said after a moment. "Scanning now. Seventy percent of guards accounted for. Major concentrations in barracks and … that's not right … infirmary?"
And that was why we were in full battle armor.
"Marines, interdict the infirmary. Break, shuttle, drones around the barracks, destroy it if they attempt a breakout, TELL THEM SO. Medics with me, move!"
And I started running forward, following our best guess schematics towards the infirmary and letting my defensive weapons go free/active.
Anyone with something in their hands that entered my line of sight was immediately stunned.
The infirmary was a four story building, easily the tallest in the camp, and Marines had taken up overlapping positions to defilade it.
"STOP WE HAVE HOSTAGES!" shouted someone on the guard radio frequency.
The Protocol specialist started to answer and I muted him.
"This is Captain Anderson, Protocol. Your lives are in my hands. If you hold hostages you will DIE. Put down your weapons, harm no one, and these facts will be much in your favor at your trial. Who is this?"
A woman's body was thrown out the window, throat cut. Spray of blood.
"STOP or we kill another one!"
Instead of replying, I changed pushes to the Marines.
"Combat hostage rescue, time now, kill all uniformed personnel, time now."
Two Marines slapped a shock charge against a vacant patch of wall, the wall shattered, and the Marines went through shooting.
In deference to the presence of hostages, their electrical grenades were set to HEAVY STUN instead of EXPLOSIVE. But accurate, aimed needler fire touched every guard uniformed skull, alive or unconscious.
Better killed now than executed later.
And there would be executions.
I entered a few seconds behind the Marines.
The first floor was a reception area. A smaller side facility for the guards themselves.
The second floor was a bunk area, filled with ill and sick prisoners and a few dead guards.
The third floor was a cross between a surgical wing and a laboratory. I had a horrible sinking feeling, seeing what I was seeing.
Everything my armor observed was being recorded and offsite copies uploaded, no matter what I said or did.
The fourth floor was administrative offices, the piled bodies of dead guards who had tried to hold hostages and make a stand, and Marines trying to render first aid to a handful of survivors.
"Medics, 4th floor, STAT!" I directed. Then went down to the third floor to look again.
"Flag for war crimes," I muttered into my recorder, needlessly.
This was a sterilization and organ harvesting lab.
I will spare you the details. As the commanding officer, I could not spare myself.
The Marines started slapping stun restraints on all the technicians.
I slapped a Protocol box on the nearest data port, and Protocol's standing request for hackers took a jolt. Then several thousand of the free world's technicians started flooding through the entire prison's network, as if firewalls did not exist.
Finished on four, the medics started evaluating the life support systems on three, trying to figure out who could be safely disconnected and who would require ANLS life support transport to advanced care.
I took a fast count.
"Logistician, declaring a medical mass casualty, requesting a field medical hospital and seven air ambulance task forces."
Battle management had kindly provided me a icon labeled BILYAD, ALL CAMERA VIEWS.
I remoted into the barracks. Ran facial recognition against the guards present. Verified twice that no civilians were present.
The long low table in the 'recreation room' equipped with cuff restraints decided me.
There was plenty of evidence in the infirmary building.
"Guards in the barracks, get up and get out of the building. You have twenty seconds," I ordered on loudspeakers and radio push. Waited a moment for the translation, then started a timer.
I then overrode the short range D-PEN mortar in the assault shuttle, bracketed the barracks, and ordered the drones slightly back.
On twenty-one, I blew up the barracks and the drones lanced the wreckage with needler fire.
"All guards accounted for," the expert system advised me in its brassy metallic voice.
We weren't done yet.
The disciplinary building awaited.
As the medics were very busy in the house of horrors miscalled an infirmary, I tasked my security detail to removing prisoners from tiger chair restraints, giving them small sips of water and triaging them.
"Cargo shuttles are here," the logistician advised.
And suddenly we were overrun with medic bots.
Small, not armored, not very bright, but able to evaluate a person's medical condition, assure an airway, establish vein access and hang an IV, and give a handful of medications. Including painkillers.
I had ordered seven hundred. I regretted not ordering a thousand.
Security bots were next. Stunner equipped, with a laser that could burn through a lock, a loudspeaker, a limited ability to recognize weapons.
Utility bots would be bringing the humanitarian food packs to the cell blocks; security bots would breach the doors and maintain door security thereafter; and medic bots would make entry and evaluate general health and count.
"Incoming call."
I took it. It was the Incident Commander. We discussed the situation briefly. There would be no field hospital and no air ambulances today. This prison was one of fourteen, and we were down the logistic pipe. Protocol heavies were investing a major base and the _world's_ stock of life support equipment was being diverted towards Western China, but it would be another day or two before the push would be felt.
I checked the template. We were tasked for priority arrival of a United States field hospital, presently in Atlanta, Georgia. Nurses and doctors who were part of a Disaster Medical Assistance Team were getting pages and going home to get their equipment, then reporting to the nearest airport for transport. It would be a day or two until they could arrive.
I noted a rules of engagement change.
"Peoples Republic of China national forces are to be treated as affirmatively neutral. Protocol forces retain self defense rights. Provincial forces are now designated as hostile repeat hostile and may be engaged by Protocol forces without further warning. PRC states that provincial forces are in mutiny."
I verified with the Marine sergeant that he had retasked the drones to theater air defense.
Meanwhile, I had twenty thousand souls to look after.
On my orders, the infirmary technicians were assembled outside the breach in the wall.
I spoke to them.
"By the authority invested in me by Protocol Enforcement, I sentence you all to death."
I picked one at random and shot him with a needler.
At least it looked random. I picked him because he was an orderly, not very medically skilled, and he had knowingly hooked people up to life support equipment to help harvest their organs. Just like all the rest of them.
"I spare your lives temporarily, for the moment, so that you can use your medical skills to keep the injured alive. For every prisoner who dies, I will kill two of you at random. If one of you kills a prisoner on purpose, I will kill you all immediately. Your only hope of survival is to do your medical best to keep all of these people alive under our orders."
"What are you staring at! Go back to work!"
When the field hospital arrived, I would review their cases based on their behavior today. I would then close their cases with my needler.
"It is one of the mercies of Allah that people doomed to die, hope still."
###
The younger generation knows what we did. We don't hide it, although you do have to look for it.
The PRC official protest for the execution of their staff is filed right next to the Protocol Enforcement commendation for lifesaving.
And nowhere in humanity's reach, is there such a thing as an organ harvesting lab.
Can you say the same?
Every generation complains about the youth.
I think my generation, the generation that actually saw the implementation of the Protocols, has the most right to complain, of any generation before us.
We eliminated poverty. We eliminated war. Crime is still a thing, but it's rare that a criminal kills someone, and we haven't had to execute anyone in over a decade. Nobody is hungry. Anyone who wants something has a reasonable shot at getting it.
It didn't happen overnight. It didn't happen easily. The work still continues today.
These kids are _spoiled_.
###
"Time to target, four minutes."
Everyone in the drop shuttle including myself was in powered battle armor. We needed to be. There were only twenty four of us, and just the one site we were tasked with contained over twenty thousand people.
"Interdiction," warned a metallic voice as a brilliant streak of light slammed down from the sky.
Apparently some local air defense unit either hadn't obeyed orders to stand down, or hadn't gotten the message. Now they weren't a factor, and a little light labeled "threat radar" winked out.
We were dropping with drones, of course. But drones were best in situations where there was some structure, and us humans were here to provide some of the reconfiguration.
"Bilyad Prison, Bilyad Prison, emergency message, life and death, life and death," said the operator. The software obligingly translated it to Mandarin Chinese, Pinyin dialect. There weren't any frequency issues, our directional beam to the complex was on all frequencies. People were probably hearing it on the fillings in their teeth.
"Bilyad Prison, respond immediately, life and death, abandon the perimeter towers immediately."
A recon drone lazily overflew the site, nearly invisible to our sensors and unseeable by a mere human on the ground. It fed our total information awareness systems, both the shuttles and our armor's.
Additional information flooded in from the combat drones, each of which was locked on to a particular tower along the twelve kilometer perimeter of the earth berm square that was Bilyad Prison.
We also had locks on the gatehouse and both main gate towers adjacent. I was willing to blow the towers, but I wanted the gatehouse. Among other things it would contain duty rosters.
"No reply," the communications specialist said, needlessly.
"Working clockwise from the main gate, illuminate the gate towers, visual light, about one per second, until all are lit. Execute," I ordered.
I was in command of this evolution. And I hated to kill people needlessly. But I would.
As the lights snapped on, one by one, one of the guard towers showed sparks as someone with a cold iron automatic rifle tried to fire on us.
"Destroy…" I said, but before I finished, the tower blew up. One of the drones had made an AI decision.
"On speakers, on frequencies. ATTENTION. BILYAD PRISON. Guards will ABANDON the towers and will go to the GATEHOUSE right now! Guards drop your weapons or you will be fired upon without warning! This prison is now under the control of Protocol Enforcement and resistance will be met immediately with deadly force!"
I paused.
"GET OUT OF THE TOWERS, WE ARE BLOWING THEM UP."
I added quietly, without turning off the hailers, "Working from the one we just blew up, one per second, change the visible light to red, clockwise, then when you get back to the tower we just blew up, start blowing them up, one per second. Do not engage anyone trying to get out of a tower."
The weapons technician nodded, bit her lip, and set it up.
I will say this for the guard forces. Less than a third of them abandoned their towers before the red illumination. All of the survivors - by definition - did abandon their towers by the second circuit, because the towers didn't exist any more.
"PRISONERS, THIS IS A RESCUE. STAY WHERE YOU ARE. GUARDS, DROP YOUR WEAPONS, ASSEMBLE AT THE FRONT GUARDHOUSE."
"Sir, distress signal from the prison, HF transmitter, calling Brigade for instructions. Brigade is not answering."
"Loudhail off. Spoof Brigade, order them to surrender to Protocol Enforcement."
"Done."
"Land adjacent to the gatehouse. Air defense interdiction to maximum. If a squirrel or a sparrow looks like it might be looking at us, vaporize it."
This was the most vulnerable moment. We hadn't been able to confirm if the prison contained any swivvers. Brilliant missiles, hand held, that could kill the shuttle and all twenty four of us, if we couldn't hack it fast enough.
"DROP DROP DROP" ordered the jumpmaster and our twelve person squad of Protocol Marines separated from the cargo bay and spread out, weapons hot and ready for anything.
Nothing.
We landed, the pilot and analyst and comm specialist would stay at their posts. The rest of us dismounted: a four person security group, two battle surgeons, a logistician, a Protocol specialist, and myself.
The two battle surgeons had red markings on their white battlesuits. As you watched, the shoulder markings rotated between a Red Cross, Red Crescent and Red Diamond. The Red Diamond stayed on the center of the back and above the foreheads. They were unarmed but carrying bulky armored boxes of medical supplies.
The rest of us were heavily, heavily armed.
"Gatehouse, get the rosters," I ordered the logistician. "Hold up on the infirmary, not quite yet. Let's get most of these guards secured. I see an officer, let's see if I can get his help."
I raised my outer faceplate so that my face would be visible through the inner transparency.
"Brevet Captain Anderson, Protocol Enforcement. Who are you?" I asked the Chinese prison officer.
"You have no jurisdiction here! Get in your craft and go away!"
One of the security specialists bracketed the Chinese officer with a mass stunner. One wrong move and he'd go down twitching.
Another mass stunner was targeted on the stunned, mostly unarmed mass of guards starting to assemble by the gatehouse. They were so conditioned to following orders that for lack of anything else to do, they'd obeyed.
They weren't going to hurt Protocol armor with rifles. But they could hurt prisoners, which is what we wanted to avoid.
"Protocol has accepted a habeus corpus warrant on behalf of all persons in custody in this province," the Protocol specialist added, unhelpfully. It presumed a level of education in Western legal theory that the officer likely did not have.
"Not your prisoners anymore. Our prisoners. They are ALL in Protocol Enforcement custody until their status can be further adjudicated. You have two choices, you can cooperate with us or you can wake up in a few hours in restraints. Your decision."
"This is illegal…" the Chinese officer began, and suddenly fell down to start his involuntary nap.
"Guards, no one will be harmed as long as you do what we say," I began.
It was mostly a lie.
This was a war crimes interdiction, after all.
"Got the rosters," the logistician said after a moment. "Scanning now. Seventy percent of guards accounted for. Major concentrations in barracks and … that's not right … infirmary?"
And that was why we were in full battle armor.
"Marines, interdict the infirmary. Break, shuttle, drones around the barracks, destroy it if they attempt a breakout, TELL THEM SO. Medics with me, move!"
And I started running forward, following our best guess schematics towards the infirmary and letting my defensive weapons go free/active.
Anyone with something in their hands that entered my line of sight was immediately stunned.
The infirmary was a four story building, easily the tallest in the camp, and Marines had taken up overlapping positions to defilade it.
"STOP WE HAVE HOSTAGES!" shouted someone on the guard radio frequency.
The Protocol specialist started to answer and I muted him.
"This is Captain Anderson, Protocol. Your lives are in my hands. If you hold hostages you will DIE. Put down your weapons, harm no one, and these facts will be much in your favor at your trial. Who is this?"
A woman's body was thrown out the window, throat cut. Spray of blood.
"STOP or we kill another one!"
Instead of replying, I changed pushes to the Marines.
"Combat hostage rescue, time now, kill all uniformed personnel, time now."
Two Marines slapped a shock charge against a vacant patch of wall, the wall shattered, and the Marines went through shooting.
In deference to the presence of hostages, their electrical grenades were set to HEAVY STUN instead of EXPLOSIVE. But accurate, aimed needler fire touched every guard uniformed skull, alive or unconscious.
Better killed now than executed later.
And there would be executions.
I entered a few seconds behind the Marines.
The first floor was a reception area. A smaller side facility for the guards themselves.
The second floor was a bunk area, filled with ill and sick prisoners and a few dead guards.
The third floor was a cross between a surgical wing and a laboratory. I had a horrible sinking feeling, seeing what I was seeing.
Everything my armor observed was being recorded and offsite copies uploaded, no matter what I said or did.
The fourth floor was administrative offices, the piled bodies of dead guards who had tried to hold hostages and make a stand, and Marines trying to render first aid to a handful of survivors.
"Medics, 4th floor, STAT!" I directed. Then went down to the third floor to look again.
"Flag for war crimes," I muttered into my recorder, needlessly.
This was a sterilization and organ harvesting lab.
I will spare you the details. As the commanding officer, I could not spare myself.
The Marines started slapping stun restraints on all the technicians.
I slapped a Protocol box on the nearest data port, and Protocol's standing request for hackers took a jolt. Then several thousand of the free world's technicians started flooding through the entire prison's network, as if firewalls did not exist.
Finished on four, the medics started evaluating the life support systems on three, trying to figure out who could be safely disconnected and who would require ANLS life support transport to advanced care.
I took a fast count.
"Logistician, declaring a medical mass casualty, requesting a field medical hospital and seven air ambulance task forces."
Battle management had kindly provided me a icon labeled BILYAD, ALL CAMERA VIEWS.
I remoted into the barracks. Ran facial recognition against the guards present. Verified twice that no civilians were present.
The long low table in the 'recreation room' equipped with cuff restraints decided me.
There was plenty of evidence in the infirmary building.
"Guards in the barracks, get up and get out of the building. You have twenty seconds," I ordered on loudspeakers and radio push. Waited a moment for the translation, then started a timer.
I then overrode the short range D-PEN mortar in the assault shuttle, bracketed the barracks, and ordered the drones slightly back.
On twenty-one, I blew up the barracks and the drones lanced the wreckage with needler fire.
"All guards accounted for," the expert system advised me in its brassy metallic voice.
We weren't done yet.
The disciplinary building awaited.
As the medics were very busy in the house of horrors miscalled an infirmary, I tasked my security detail to removing prisoners from tiger chair restraints, giving them small sips of water and triaging them.
"Cargo shuttles are here," the logistician advised.
And suddenly we were overrun with medic bots.
Small, not armored, not very bright, but able to evaluate a person's medical condition, assure an airway, establish vein access and hang an IV, and give a handful of medications. Including painkillers.
I had ordered seven hundred. I regretted not ordering a thousand.
Security bots were next. Stunner equipped, with a laser that could burn through a lock, a loudspeaker, a limited ability to recognize weapons.
Utility bots would be bringing the humanitarian food packs to the cell blocks; security bots would breach the doors and maintain door security thereafter; and medic bots would make entry and evaluate general health and count.
"Incoming call."
I took it. It was the Incident Commander. We discussed the situation briefly. There would be no field hospital and no air ambulances today. This prison was one of fourteen, and we were down the logistic pipe. Protocol heavies were investing a major base and the _world's_ stock of life support equipment was being diverted towards Western China, but it would be another day or two before the push would be felt.
I checked the template. We were tasked for priority arrival of a United States field hospital, presently in Atlanta, Georgia. Nurses and doctors who were part of a Disaster Medical Assistance Team were getting pages and going home to get their equipment, then reporting to the nearest airport for transport. It would be a day or two until they could arrive.
I noted a rules of engagement change.
"Peoples Republic of China national forces are to be treated as affirmatively neutral. Protocol forces retain self defense rights. Provincial forces are now designated as hostile repeat hostile and may be engaged by Protocol forces without further warning. PRC states that provincial forces are in mutiny."
I verified with the Marine sergeant that he had retasked the drones to theater air defense.
Meanwhile, I had twenty thousand souls to look after.
On my orders, the infirmary technicians were assembled outside the breach in the wall.
I spoke to them.
"By the authority invested in me by Protocol Enforcement, I sentence you all to death."
I picked one at random and shot him with a needler.
At least it looked random. I picked him because he was an orderly, not very medically skilled, and he had knowingly hooked people up to life support equipment to help harvest their organs. Just like all the rest of them.
"I spare your lives temporarily, for the moment, so that you can use your medical skills to keep the injured alive. For every prisoner who dies, I will kill two of you at random. If one of you kills a prisoner on purpose, I will kill you all immediately. Your only hope of survival is to do your medical best to keep all of these people alive under our orders."
"What are you staring at! Go back to work!"
When the field hospital arrived, I would review their cases based on their behavior today. I would then close their cases with my needler.
"It is one of the mercies of Allah that people doomed to die, hope still."
###
The younger generation knows what we did. We don't hide it, although you do have to look for it.
The PRC official protest for the execution of their staff is filed right next to the Protocol Enforcement commendation for lifesaving.
And nowhere in humanity's reach, is there such a thing as an organ harvesting lab.
Can you say the same?
