Chapter 11 :- Mobilization
Artificial,
And unnatural,
The Hive Mind.
Sorting through the variables,
Drawing upon the historical archives,
And the latest NanoMech intel reports,
To reach a conclusion that troubled Dian.
"Come now, although I respect your valued opinion,
More even than any living breathing person alive today,
You must shift your ground. No nuclear warheads. Thats impossible."
"No!
To suggest,
Such a thing!
This I cannot allow.
Keiran is my great equal.
My Pompey. My Duke of Wellington.
For what makes a great conqueror great,
Is an enemy as wily and as cunning!
Genghis Khan had no equal in his time, and
The Desert Fox was fated to never battle against General Patton!"
"Rare.
The confrontation,
Of two conquerors,
In the same world.
Of two great global conquerors,
Why that is even rarer still!
And thus in recognition of this fact,
I promised Keiran to fight a conventional war!
When the TechnoMachia ends and the victory is complete,
I shall stand tall knowing I won without nuclear weaponry!"
Logical,
It was,
The Hive Mind.
Lacking the intuitive emotions
Of human pride and glory.
And so The Hive Mind proclaimed.
"This is the easiest path to victory.
To not consider the stratagem is most unwise.
The other option is conventional war lasting many years!
Fighting on many fronts simultaneously, including in space and technologically!"
"Then,"
Dian exclaimed.
"So be it!
You may not understand,
But perhaps later you will.
And perhaps I may regret this,
Becoming overwhelmed with many battlezones, countless operations!
But I shall not steal victory in the night,
Instead I shall seize impressive victory beneath an illustrious sun!"
"So,
Here now,
Discuss with me,
The pre-emptive strike plans!
That together we may strategise,
Apply our human and computational intellects,
And thus capture the rich Tantalum mines,
To annex and make supplicants of the Indonesians,
That we may capture the fuels needed for space colonisation!"
"Yes."
It replied,
With dubious fortitude.
For the Hive Mind,
It could easily calculate variables,
But remained perplexed by human emotions.
For although it was instilled with feelings,
It still could not comprehend its inherent unpredictability.
"The enemy mobilizes in space, land, air, and sea.
If we wait, they grow stronger. But so do we."
Dian,
He pondered.
"The sabotage operations.
To inhibit their mobilization.
And buy us the time,
For our forces to grow strong.
Latest intel reports indicated our hacker teams,
Had infiltrated key military installations and carried out,
Successful computer virus missions that downed important communications networks.
As well as fought off several hundred counter hacker operations."
"Yes,"
It confirmed,
The artificial intelligence,
Of The Hive Mind,
Casting through its memory banks,
Before it continued on dutifully. Loyally.
"Almost a million hackers working in parallel,
They made co-ordinated attacks and the enemy faltered,
Its counter cyber assaults were neglegible and less structured
Involving two hundred thousand hackers, being pre-dawn at the time."
"Helpful,
The intel,
That was ascertained,
By our assault hackers."
The Hive Mind began recounting.
"Space Station Constellation is fully arrayed,
With cybernauts and a range of StarGazers.
Ground forces include seventeen Tyrannex and three brigades,
Covering the two main mining zones, Surabaya and Jaisur.
Naval and air units are not yet at full strength."
"Good.
We dominate,
Two terrestrial arms;
The sky and seas.
Isolate them and deploy Gaoshun.
Let them learn the hard way,
The power of our recent technological advances!"
And so the first battle of Technomachia began.
As the two mortal enemies drew ever more closer.
And the weeks of intrigue gave way to pure massacre.
YOU ARE READING
The Last Human
Science FictionIt is the year 2087. The Last Human has been on the run for twenty years and is finally captured by the victorious alien conquerors, The Stellaris. He is brought before a court of alien inquisitors a broken man. Here he retells in poetic saga, the m...
