God's Dogs Book 2
Chapter 9

On dispersive ground, therefore, fight not. On facile ground, halt not. On contentious ground, attack not.

Sun Tzu

New Bohn, as a city of ten million, was laid out with both technical and political goals. The technical goal was common to urban design: mixed-use areas, green belts interspersed with work areas and living areas. The political goal was to create the illusion that the empire was the center of the universe. This was accomplished through the architecture of the government buildings down to the naming of streets after empire heroes.

After a full decade of war, those grandiose goals were replaced by a crumbling infrastructure subsisting off a streamlined market economy. People did have jobs; food did make it to distribution centers; the water and waste water systems worked; the government maintained and administered what it should. Even so, there was a disconnect between the powers-that-be and the DNP majority in the city. They felt themselves to be living in enemy occupied territory.

As such, they adopted a Victim mindset, which consequently justified or rationalized their anti-government behavior – terrorism, in other words. For, even though the worldwide referendum, by a substantial margin, adopted the League Charter, the dissidents refused to be held to it. They were the elite of the empire, after all, and should, by right of birth, rule the masses.

This was a perennial human issue. People were born into a world where those like themselves are ‘safe.’ People, in one sense, are born racist, classist, and inherently fear the ‘other.’ Equality needs to be taught, or people come to accept a stratified society, the divine right to rule, oligarchies in power, and so on.

Penglai addressed this issue in its educational system in a variety of ways. They addressed the inherent fear through martial arts training, team building, and emphasizing the social drive in humankind brought about synergistic solutions to problems. This, in addition to their meditative practices, produced ‘fearless’ children that wanted to work and play together with others. Finally, the ‘nature’s approach’ to agriculture invested in children a connection to nature and, by extension, the Creator, to support them in achieving their goals by connecting to those around them.

The other worlds in the League accomplished similar goals through different means. This was so, because of how the League was funded. The funding mechanism made it financially beneficial for a world government to support the self-actualization of each citizen.

The League tax on each world was based on two competing measures: the solar system’s gross product minus the sustainable economic welfare of the system and the overall quality of life of its citizens.

The hard data minus the soft data produced the monetary figure that system paid the League. Paradoxically, the actual amount paid, while it tended to increase yearly, didn’t hinder the advancement of each citizen’s quality of life. Indeed, this system produced a dynamism within each society as it built on what previous generations accomplished.

The empire, by contrast, followed the structure of other historical empires, be they royalty, oligarchies, or plutocracies that demanded a class distribution among the people: rulers, workers, clergy, military, bankers, lawyers, and so on received the lion’s share; the masses got the leftovers. Those divisions did exist as job descriptions in the League, but in the empire they had been class distinctions that were available either by right of birth or as gifts to loyal servants. Changing one’s station in life on merit, while possible, wasn’t the norm. Indeed, the very idea of self-actualization wasn’t in the vocabulary.

This was one reason why the League sought to avoid the patronage system the Congress employed. It was too much like the civilizations in humanity’s past, and the League was in the process of transcending that form of social structure.

And now Quinn’s team was about to jump into the deep end of the pool with people who wanted to bring back that failed system.

There was a ten-mile-square area in the heart of the city, a mix of warehouses and commercial offices that was the stronghold of the DNP. The team moved into the area on separate routes but with the same goal: maximum disruption.

Using a list of those wanted by the authorities, the team stunned and handcuffed these people of interest. The militia followed behind and secured them.

[There’s another one,] River’s A.I. Becky sent as she highlighted a figure on River’s HUD (heads-up display).

River wore her light armor in stealth mode. It was late afternoon and the shadows between buildings aided in keeping her hidden.

The highlighted man was walking with two others. River dropped the stealth mode as she stunned him.

“You are under arrest,” she told him as he fell.

The other two startled and went for their concealed weapons. River stunned them as well with her handgun but didn’t secure them with handcuffs.

Then she called in on the tac-net, “Dayo, I’ve got another one for you.”

The sergeant replied, “Got your location. Be there shortly.”

A hesitant crowd began forming as the building they were near released its occupants for the day. River scanned the crowd.

Becky said, [Here’s another one.]

River latched onto the highlighted man, clicked her stealth setting on, and bounded toward the man. Dropping the stealth, she stunned him while saying, “You’re under arrest.”

He dropped and she secured him, but someone in the crowd shouted, “You can’t do that!”

“Can’t do what?” she fired back.

No one answered.

She went on, “We’re rounding up all the terrorists. You ought to be happy.”

Sergeant Blessing’s truck roared up. Her men lifted the first man into the truck, then motored over to where River was.

Blessing hopped out of the passenger side as the crowd dispersed. “The easy pickings are over. We’ve got a lot of comm traffic in this area.”

“How are the boys doing?”

“About the same as you. We’ve got fifty-two in the holding cell at last count.”

“This is your last run, then,” River told her. “From now on, we’ll be running into ambushes.”

“My read as well. We have isolated where the comm traffic is originating. My RTO sent you the coordinates.”

Then she hopped into the truck. “Don’t forget to invite us to the party.”

River grinned and waved as the truck roared away. She resumed stealth mode and checked her HUD for directions to the probable command center and hurried that way.

Moss was already there, scouting the location for what the ambush would look like. It was a three-storey office building sandwiched between two warehouses. Across the street was a row of warehouses with loading docks at the rear. It was cramped quarters for fighting, and the warehouses could hide a substantial enemy force.

Moss climbed the office building to get a better view and noticed trucks and smaller vehicles headed toward them. It looked like the reinforcements were headed to the warehouses across the street. If they were all connected, the enemy could assemble a force pretty much anywhere along the street, and the satellites in orbit wouldn’t know where they were.

Pax joined him on the roof. “How many?”

“A hundred or more.”

“Well, I’m not looking forward to this,” Pax told him.

“Our terms, their ground,” Moss replied. “Not sure what Sun Tzu would say about that.”

Quinn checked in over the tac-net, “I’m in position, and I see River’s icon. We should be ready to launch in five mikes.”

“We’re ready,” Moss said. Then he and Pax positioned themselves to rappel down the wall and breach at the second floor. It was a floor with offices, according to an earlier scouting report. The top floor was conference rooms. The ground floor was admin, security, and human resources. They didn’t know what might be below ground.

River arrived, and shortly thereafter Quinn called out, “Breach!”

Moss and Pax pushed off from the building to swing in an arc to crash feet first through adjoining windows. River and Quinn used a breaching charge on the front door and rolled into intense fire from the troops within. Their suit shields absorbed the fire, and they returned fire, advancing on the guards to either side of the door.

Pax and Moss cleared rooms as they descended to the ground floor using the stairwell. When they arrived, only River and Quinn were left standing in the entryway.

Quinn called Pax over. “This guy is alive. Have him direct us to the command center.”

Pax ignored the dozen or so sprawled bodies and began interrogating the prisoner as the rest of them returned to the shattered front door.

Moss commented, “I guess they’re having trouble organizing their response.” He was scanning the street and the warehouses opposite them.

Quinn chuckled at that and said, “I don’t think we could have made this any easier for them.”

“Yeah,” Moss replied, “about that. We’re really putting a lot on an unproven hypothesis.”

“I know, but too many things are fitting together.”

“It’s worth the risk,” River said. “Lockhart wasn’t evil, since he was a psychopath, but his lieutenants were. I met some of them when I was captured.”

Moss responded, “Well, we’ve got movement two doors down on the right. Looks like they’re ready to attack. We’re committed now.”

Pax called them over. “This way.”

He led them to a blank wall, pressed the hand of a dead officer to a panel, and the wall opened to stairs. They hurried down to the basement.

Meeting little resistance, they stacked up on the control room’s double doors. Pax mounted the breaching charge and fell back behind Moss.

“Three, two, one.”

The charge exploded inward, and the team followed, two to the left, two to the right.

Overhead gun turrets began firing, and they quickly disabled those. Otherwise, the room was empty of people.

River checked the computers. “As we suspected, it’s all repeater comm units. We are now trapped in an underground room with no escape.”

Moss chuckled. “We got them right where we want them.”

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