The command room was small, half filled by an artificial, mechanical command console, and was an otherwise dark, chilly, and cold space. The silvery walls and floor were dimly lit by the console’s standby-mode hologram.
Taking a seat on the armchair, Lena shifted her argent locks aside and placed a resplendent metal ring—the RAID Device—around her neck with a cold, dignified gaze. Now that the battlefronts were far beyond the walls of the Gran Mule, this cramped room was the sole battlefield one could find in the Republic’s eighty-five Sectors.
“Commence authentication. Major Vladilena Milizé, commanding control officer for the eastern front’s ninth ward, third defensive squadron.”
Having completed its retinal and voice authentication, the control system turned on. Holographic screens flickered on one after another, displaying a dizzying amount of information from countless pieces of observation equipment set across the distant battlefield. The main screen was a digital map that displayed the Republic’s and the enemy’s mobile weapons as blips. The friendly units—in other words, the Juggernauts—were displayed as blue blips, numbering seventy. The third squadron, which was under Lena’s command, had twenty-four units, while the second and fourth squadron had twenty-three each. The red blips that symbolized the enemy units, the Legion, were far too many to count.
“Activate Para-RAID. Set Resonance target, information-processing unit Pleiades.”
The blue-crystal portion of the RAID Device, which was set against the nape of Lena’s neck, suddenly prickled with heat. It wasn’t actual, physical heat but an illusory heat felt by her nerve cells as they were stimulated by the Sensory Resonance. The activated pseudo-nerve-cell crystal served as an information-processing unit and stimulated a certain part of the brain. Perhaps that part held potential to be unlocked by humanity’s evolution, or perhaps it was an unused section, left behind and forgotten by humankind as it evolved ages ago. Whatever the case, using it unlocked a deep, nigh-vestigial function of the brain known as the Night Head.
Lena passed through a “path,” diving into a place far deeper than her consciousness and even her subconscious. The “collective unconscious” of humankind, shared by every member of the human race. Lena linked her consciousness with the third squadron’s captain, the Processor operating Personal Name unit Pleiades via the sea of the unconscious. Pleiades’s and Lena’s sensory information was linked and shared.
✦ ✦ ✦
✦ ✦ ✦
“Handler One to Pleiades—Resonance complete. I look forward to working with you today,” she said gently, and the “voice” of a young man, presumably a year or two older than she was, replied.
“Pleiades to Handler One. Resonance is loud and clear.”
✦ ✦ ✦
The voice was laced with irony. Lena was all alone in the command room, so it wasn’t the someone else with her. It was the voice of Pleiades’s Processor, being transmitted to her through their now-shared sense of hearing.
A voice.
Having been built in a hurry during wartime, Juggernauts weren’t constructed to be able to communicate orally, and they weren’t programmed to have advanced cognitive abilities that would allow them to think or feel. The Para-RAID—Sensory Resonance—linked consciousness via the human collective unconscious; the defense lines’ minefield, despite the enemy using armored units, was set with antipersonnel mines.
The secret behind the front lines where drones fought one another, the battlefield with zero casualties.
“Your polite greetings to us subhuman Eighty-Six are much appreciated, Alba.”
✦ ✦ ✦
Eighty-Six. As the continent was being swept over by the Legion, the last remaining paradise for the Republic’s citizens was the eighty-five Sectors. The Eighty-Sixth Sector was designated a no-man’s-land, populated by pigs in human form. Despite being born civilians of the Republic, they were decreed to be subhuman, inferior life-forms by the Republic. It was a derogatory name for those Colorata cast outside the Gran Mule to live in internment camps on the front lines.
Nine years earlier, year 358 of the Republic calendar, year 2136 of the global calendar.
The Republic’s eastern neighbor and superpower of the northern continent, the Empire of Giad, declared war on all its neighboring countries and began attacking with an army of the world’s first completely autonomous unmanned combat drone, Legion.
Faced with the Empire’s overwhelming military strength, the Republic Armed Forces were decimated within half a month. As what was left of the army gathered its remaining forces to stall the invasion via hopeless delay tactics, the Republic’s government made two decisions.
The first was the evacuation of all the Republic’s citizens to the eighty-fifth administrative Sector. The second was Presidential Order #6609. The Special Wartime Peace Preservation Act. This law acknowledged all persons of Colorata descent within the borders of the Republic as inimical characters and supporters of the Empire and allowed the stripping of their civilian rights. They were designated as targets of monitoring and isolated in internment camps outside the eighty-five Sectors.
This act was, of course, in violation of the Republic’s constitution and the spirit of the five-hued flag. The law also did not include Alba, who formerly lived in the Empire. Neither did it spare Colorata who were not originally from the Empire. It was a policy of blatant racism and discrimination.
The Colorata were opposed to the law, of course, but their opposition was silenced by violence at the hands of the government. Some Alba, however few, also cried out against the law, but the majority accepted it. The eighty-five Sectors were far too small to accommodate the sheer number of civilians, and there was nowhere near enough food, land, or labor for everyone. False rumors were spread that the Republic’s defeat in the war came as a result of the Colorata’s spying. Those rumors were far easier for the civilians to accept than coming to terms with their country’s technological inferiority.
But more than anything, in a situation where they were surrounded and isolated by enemies, they needed something, someone, to take their frustrations out on. This justification by way of eugenics spread quickly among the populace. The Alba, who founded the country that stood as the foremost advocate of democracy—the greatest, most humane of all forms of government—were the superior race. By contrast, the Colorata, with their outdated, cruel, and inhumane imperialism, were an inferior species—barbaric and foolish subhumans, pigs in human form and the result of an evolutionary blunder.
Thus, all Colorata in the Republic were banished to internment camps where they were forced into labor and conscripted for the sake of constructing the Gran Mule. Their properties and belongings were requisitioned by the government to fund the construction of the wall and the war effort, and the Alba civilians who were spared from conscription, labor, and wartime taxes all praised the government’s humane methodology.
The Alba mocked the Colorata as a lesser species, calling them the Eighty-Six. This discriminatory approach ultimately manifested two years later with the introduction of drones manned by living soldiers—and all those soldiers were of the Eighty-Six. Despite pouring all their efforts into producing a Republic-made unmanned drone, no attempt ever achieved the level where it could withstand live combat. But there was no way the superior Alba could admit to failing to produce such a machine when the inferior Empire could.