The Rise of the Speaker

by Pete Driscoll

Instead of the choice between dying at Spartan hands or Nassan’s, the rebel soldiers – many of whom were given no choice but to join the army in the first place – now found themselves with another option. By the tenth day of the war, almost 270,000 men had surrendered to the Atlantian forces. That, however, was where the good news ended. The death toll in the rebel army had been horrific, of the roughly 200,000 men left in Nassan’s army, almost half had been killed, but the 120,000 or so men still alive were Nassan’s most loyal and fanatical followers. Nassan had then made a decision that would etch his name in the history of infamy.

  “what do you mean, they’re gone?” I asked Alice in disbelief. The tactical map of the region on one of the office screens still showed a massive swath of territory still under Nassan’s control; the Spartan forces had spent the past two weeks pushing at the borders, reducing the extent of his territory with each Atlantian victory. Alice had tried to blanket the rebel-controlled area with surveillance Nanites in an attempt to monitor enemy movements but had only managed to cover about 10% of Nassan’s territory.

  Our reconnaissance relied almost exclusively on aerial observation from our air assets and what the Spartans could see on the borders in front of them. But with an enemy fighting on familiar territory, able to melt into the countryside at will and travelling entirely by night, keeping tabs on them had proven difficult; like the artillery at the cabin, Alice had vowed to work on the problem, but a solution wouldn’t come in time to solve our current situation. I had awoken one morning to Alice – in a concerned voice – telling me that the entire enemy force, at least the ones we were currently tracking, had vanished.

  “The next phase of the offensive was due to start this morning, with the Spartans being resupplied in the night. When they started advancing at dawn, the rebels were gone. The Spartans have already advanced 50 miles on all fronts and have encountered exactly zero resistance.” Alice explained, “there are only two possibilities, either they have fallen back to a central location and concentrated their forces, or they have switched tactics to an insurgency-type conflict. It is impossible – at this time – to know which they have chosen”

  “Could they have given up?” I asked hopefully, “Could they have thrown in the towel and gone home?”

  “Without a single one of them being caught by the Spartan advance? or surrendering to the Spartans directly? It’s very unlikely.”

  “Damn!” I muttered; my momentary bout of optimism shattered. “I think it goes without saying that we need to find them.”

  “the air force is already on it.” Alice answered plainly, “Reconnaissance aircraft – mostly Longbows – are scouring the area looking for tracks, any troop movement of this scale would be impossible to conceal completely. Hopefully, those tracks will lead us to troop concentrations, and we can issue orders accordingly. However, if they are starting an insurgency, the army would have scattered with small groups holding villages and strategic locations… but if that was the case, the Spartans should have encountered at least some of them by now.”

  “Which do you think is more likely?”

  “I’d say that an insurgency is the least likely. The concept of guerrilla warfare is to inflict losses on the enemy without the need for a front. Not only has Nassan been perfectly happy with a front up until now, he knows by this point that destroying Spartans is beyond his army’s capabilities – they couldn’t inflict losses if they tried.”

  “what if they were targeting civilians?”

  “Again, we would have encountered that by now.”

  “I don’t like the sound of this.”

  “Neither do I.” Alice conceded “If they are concentrating their forces, it will take some time. But more importantly, they would be doing it for a reason; either a last stand, or…”

  “Or a new offensive.” I finished with no attempt to hide the concern in my voice.

  “I don’t need to remind you, but an army of more than 100,000 men can do a massive amount of damage if deployed against a single target… and if that target is a civilian population…”

  “shit… Ok, how many Spartans are currently on the ground?”

  “Between all fronts? About 38,000.”

  “aright, deploy the rest, spread them equally between every major population centre in or close to Nassan’s territory. Concentrate on the Sudanese and Ugandan capitals first, both of those cities are uncomfortably close to the front, redeploy the Mechs to those locations as well and make sure there is plenty of air cover. If Nassan intends to attack one of these cities, I want to be ready for them.”

  “Consider it done, Spartans will be on station within 2 hours. In the meantime, the Spartans on the front will continue the offensive into Nassan’s territory, at the current rate of advance, rebel-controlled territory will be completely liberated within 4 days.”

  “Excellent, thank you, Alice… Let the Ugandan and Sudanese Presidents know what is happening and keep me informed of any updates.”

  Alice cocked her head to one side, tens of thousands of orders emanating from her system in the blink of an eye. At times like these – when mass orders were transmitted at once – her efficiency rose from the 3% that was standard these days to as high as 12%; the fact that this number was nowhere near full capacity was testament to the power of her mainframe.

  I moved behind my desk, it would be another few hours before my attention would be needed by the war effort, but now I still had a country to run and a UN debate to prepare for.

  “Something is wrong.” Alice’s concerned voice yanked my attention back to her. “I cannot reach President Museveni…” her soft features contorted into a frown “… or anyone else in the Ugandan government for that matter.” Her eye widened in something akin to fear, “there are no signals at all from the Capital, Kampala had gone dark!”

  “What do you mean dark!?!”

  “All our communications were routed via radio waves… If they have been blocked, or the transmitters destroyed, we would lose communications. I can’t even pick up any commercial radio frequencies, it’s as if the city isn’t there.”

  “Get those air assets to Kampala… Now!”

  40 minutes later, the second of the five screens on my office wall flickered into life as the feed from a Longbow fighter bomber was brought up. The aircraft was just clearing the north western mountains, the impressive and expansive Lake Victoria immediately dominating the horizon; under normal circumstances I wouldn’t have been able to stop myself from admiring this awe-inspiring view, but between the Lake and the aircrafts camera stood the city of Kampala, and it was burning.

  Huge pillars of black smoke rose up from countless fires across the city, the flashes of explosions could be made out even from this distance. As the Longbow closed on the besieged warzone, a thin ring of men could be made out encircling Kampala, artillery emplacements – all of which were in the process of bombarding the city – were dotted throughout the rebel army. A few columns of armoured vehicles were slowly moving towards the city limits, with groups of men following closely behind.

  The ten aircraft in the squadron immediately moved to attack the advancing rebels, another 8 squadrons were a few minutes behind but the flight of Condor dropships – and their compliment of Spartans – were still over an hour away. These aircraft would have to hold the line until they arrived.

  “Sudan have reported back, no sign of Nassan’s forces there, it looks like this is the entire rebel army.”

  I assume Alice was trying to provide a silver lining to the catastrophic mistake that had been made in allowing these forces to – somehow – slip past our lines. The steady stream of rebel reinforcements making their way towards the attacking army only served to illustrate the scale of our hubris; Somehow, we had ‘lost’ 120,000 men, allowing them the time and the space to attack one of the most populous cities in this part of the world and now over 1.5 million civilians were at their mercy.

  As I was contemplating our mistake and the arrogance that had a
llowed it, Alice was busy issuing orders. The ten aircraft in the flight banked towards the enemy forces and moved in for the attack. Two headed for the armoured vehicles and infantry advancing on the city, another two moved to engage the tightly packed and neatly lined-up column of reinforcements approaching from the north, the other six fell into a strafing pattern and made for the enemy lines.

  “I don’t want a single rebel soldier to enter that city!” I barked, “I don’t care what it takes, Kampala will not fall today!”

  Alice only nodded in grim determination as the sleek, hypersonic jets closed on the targets. A few seconds later the offensive force – now almost at the city limits – was swallowed up in a furious series of explosions as the X2 equipped Longbows made their first pass, the violence of the attack only visible on screen for an instant as the feed from the lead plane turned towards the line of artillery and infantry in the enemy lines.

  The slender, swept wing outlines of two other Longbows appeared in the top two corners of the screen as the six bombers took up attack positions, the aircraft in the left corner was clearly further ahead of the rest of the flight; the turrets on the underside of its wings homed in on their targets as faint green flashes flared from the barrels. The aircraft in the right corner of the screen did the same as a steady stream of green bolts shot from the aircraft’s weapons system, followed quickly by more bolts flying from the bottom of the screen as the lead plane – and source of our feed – also opened fire.

  The North western element of the encircling enemy line was bathed in plasma, huge sections of the rebel army simply ceased to exist as their bodies and equipment were swallowed by the bright green flames. It took almost 3 minutes for the Longbows to make their way along the entire rebel line, firing continuously as they went. When they reached the Eastern end of the line, they broke off, circling over the city as they made their way back towards the western end of Nassan’s line to make another pass.

  With the camera still orientated toward the ground as the flight passed over the suburbs, it quickly became clear that my order to refuse entry to any rebel soldiers would not be possible. The Ugandan forces had set up roadblocks and barricades in the streets and were frantically trying to hold back the rebel fighters who were already in the city. Brave Ugandan soldiers, hopelessly outgunned, were trying to hold back a tide of rebel armour and infantry as they advanced towards the urban centre. At a few locations, the lines had already collapsed, the army fighting a desperate running battle with the advancing enemy. There was nothing we could do to help.

  X2 fire was far too violent and explosive to be used in urban streets, not without causing massive collateral damage and unacceptable civilian casualties. The smaller and more accurate rapid-fire X1 weaponry on the Broadsword class fighters would’ve been able to strafe up the city streets with much more success, but they were still a few minutes away. I could only watch in helpless horror as fleeing civilians – and the courageous Ugandan soldiers trying to protect them – were mercilessly cut down by the relentless rebel fire.

  The flight re-converged above the Western city limits before beginning their second attack on the enemy lines. Alice redirected two of the six aircraft on the bombing run to help the two Longbows keeping the attackers out of the city. By the time the second pass was completed, the rest of the aircraft would have arrived and the Broadswords could provide covering fire to the embattled Ugandan army.

  It took another agonisingly long 4 minutes for the other squadrons to arrive, there were three more flights of Longbows, one of which was immediately dispatched to help stem the flow of reinforcements from the North, the second replaced the aircraft covering the approaches the city and the rest, including the original squadron, resumed the relentless pounding of the entrenched enemy lines. There was one reconnaissance squadron – who took up positions high above the city, finally allowing Alice and I a complete picture of the battlefield – and four Broadsword fighter squadrons.

  “The rebel attack seems to have been halted by the Ugandan army,” Allice announced, “there doesn’t appear to be any hostile forces outside the northern suburbs…Setting up overwatch.” Alice’s voice was much calmer than it should have been given the situation, but I only nodded. I watched on the reconnaissance feed as forty aircraft – the capabilities of which I was still unsure of – moved to strategic positions above intersections around the northern Kampala suburbs, in front of the attacking forces, hovered and reduced their altitude to less than 10ft. The Ugandans seemed to realise what was happening and began to rally around or behind the hovering fighters, then – with remarkable military efficiency – the fighters unleashed a blistering torrent of plasma bolts up the streets and into the advancing enemy forces.

  Rebel soldiers were ripped to pieces as steams of red bolts raced up the wide and unobstructed avenues of approach. The Aerial view of the intersection looked like a can of spray paint unleashing a ceaseless stream of red droplets up the street. My mind briefly flashed back to Alice’s demonstration of the X1 rifles at the cabin all those years ago, and the limitations of those lethal red bolts when attacking armoured vehicles; apparently those limitations didn’t apply to this volume of fire as the BMP-1s absorbed a tremendous amount of plasma bolts, the crews inside having no chance of survival, at first it looked as if the vehicles would survive – just as Alice predicted – but the individual holes left by the Broadsword’s X1 cannons quickly joined into a patchwork of damage and the armour disintegrated from the hull. Thousands of eviscerated rebel bodies – some having been hit so many times that their bodies had almost disintegrated – lined the streets, the Ugandan soldiers cheering as they were swept along with the tide of relief.

  By the time the Spartans arrived – almost an hour later – the rebels were in full retreat, but my blood was up. The encircling enemy lines had been decimated, with hundreds of artillery pieces, troop transports and other vehicles burning around the corpses of tens of thousands of dead rebel soldiers, the stream of reinforcements coming from the north had reversed direction, joining the surviving rebel army in their flight from the battle. A handful of condors deployed their Spartans in the city in front of the still hovering Broadswords, each squad going from house to house, aiding civilians where they could, arresting rebel fighters who were sensible enough to surrender and mercilessly dispatching the ones who were still intent on continuing the fight. The rest of the Spartans and the Mechs were deployed in a circle around the retreating enemy, cutting off any and every avenue of escape. Then they squeezed.

  Mechs unleashed a shower of plasma fire on the still fighting rebel soldiers as the Spartans closed in around them. The battle continued for the rest of the day as the Spartans closed in on the increasingly suicidal and fanatical rebels. By the time the last shot was fired, there were barely 18,000 of the 120,000 men left alive as they finally decided to lay down their arms and surrender. Each and every one of them was restrained and arrested by the Spartans, most of them would be transferred to the now distant prisoner-of-war camps, their fates to be decided by the countries they had tried to destroy.

  The leaders of the army – including a badly burned Abud Nassan – were to be sent to the Hague; the international community may have been indifferent to the plight of the Central African countries and unwilling to lend military support, but the international criminal court was more than eager to prosecute the perpetrators of such heinous war crimes. The international press was still – months after the conflict had begun – uncovering astonishing amounts of evidence of the barbaric atrocities ordered and committed by Abud Nassan and his men.

  Finally, the war was over.

  “The people of the Central African countries can sleep easier now that Abud Nassan and his rebel army have finally surrendered.” I was amazed by the fact that the reporter – the same man who had reported from the battle of Birao – hadn’t been fired by the famously reserved BBC. “But here, in the ruins of the Northern Kampala suburbs, with thousands of civilians killed, the task o
f counting the costs is only just beginning.”

  “The Atlantian government – criticised by parts of the international community for their excessive use of force against the rebel army – is yet to give a credible explanation as to how such a large force managed to evade their now infamous Spartan soldiers and attack the Ugandan capital. It may be telling that the major powers of America, Russia and China have been the most vocal in this criticism of Atlantia, with both the US and Russian Presidents going as far as suggesting that the Spartan soldiers and the technology responsible for their construction be confiscated from the yet-unrecognised Island nation.

  “How the rebel forces managed to get passed the massively superior Atlantian military is still a mystery. The Speaker’s Tower issued a statement earlier today saying that investigations into the military blunder were already underway. They did, however, also pay tribute to the bravery and professionalism of the Ugandan army in their selfless defence of Kampala, holding the rebels at bay until Spartan reinforcements could arrive. Soldiers who survived the battle have been quick to point out that stemming the tide of the rebel attack would have been impossible without the support of Atlantian aircraft.

  “The Ugandan President, Ide Museveni - who was badly injured when a rebel shell hit the Presidential offices - along with his regional counterparts have refused to echo or support any of the criticisms levelled against the Atlantian Speaker, instead pointing out that the survival of their respective countries and the end to the sub-Saharan war – not to mention the apprehension of Abud Nassan - is almost entirely thanks to Atlantian involvement in the crisis.

  “Yesterday – in an act of unity that would have been unthinkable a few decades ago - they issued a joint statement from the steps of the Presidential palace, thanking the Speaker for coming to their aide when… and I quote… ‘the indifference and apathy of the international community would have allowed the deaths of millions’, they went on to say that responsibility for civilian casualties - including those lost in the attack on Kampala - lies solely at the feet of Abud Nassan. They went on to express their deepest respect and gratitude to the Atlantian people, declaring a lasting friendship, not only between the African Nations and Atlantia, but between the African nations themselves, leading to hopes of a more peaceful and stable future for the region.