Population Control
Chapter 3
By Blobskin
Contains: pony, mercenary, sci-fi, micro humans
Version: 1
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Imelda's heart raced, adrenaline flooded her veins, and her muscles tensed. The humans were here, but what was their first response? What was coming? The mare glanced at her data pad. It was connected to her ship's main computer and her satellite above. She quickly asked it to scan the incoming targets.
Three human military helicopters, each about half the size of her head.
Imelda narrowed her eyes in thought at that. She couldn't imagine any military would bother attacking with such a small force. And she didn't intend the pun either. It must have been a scouting mission. They were disposable soldiers meant to get a look at her. There was no doubt they were recording her and sending the images back to their commander. The question was what to do about this.
The helicopters were small, but they didn't appear to be particularly fast. She'd probably waste a number of bullets, however Imelda concluded it would be easy to shoot them down. But should she? Did she care if they were watching her? The unicorn peeked over her shoulder at her digging machine. It just finished filling one of the carts which then began heading for the ship to drop off its load. What would the human response to this be? Imelda didn't feel ready for combat yet. She really wanted her armor and she only had 100 bullets. Delaying the fighting until she was fully equipped was her primary concern, but plans rarely worked out during war. If humans shot first then she had to retaliate.
Imelda didn't consider herself a master strategist. She wasn't a leader, she didn't give orders. Thinking about her actions like this did not come naturally to her. She was used to having her equipment and intel and simply jumping into the fight. Hesitation often got you killed in her line of work. However, the current situation was backwards from the norm. She had to make her gear while deep in enemy territory, yet the enemy didn't even know she was hostile to them. It twisted Imelda's mind around like a pretzel. It made her feel like she had to plan every move. The mare felt her anger stirring. The desire to simply act was bubbling up.
She stomped those feelings down for now as the helicopters began to circle her and the digging machine. The whirring of their rotor blades made her ears turn toward them. She glared at the closest one as it strayed nearer to her than the others. She got her first in-person look at humans from a soldier leaning partially out the side. She wasn't sure what to make of them. It looked just like one of the images she had been sent and they were indeed tiny things.
What was her strategy here? They hadn't shot at her and she hadn't impulsively fired on them either. Yet Imelda felt like she was being hunted. Three enemy aircraft were circling her. Her left leg twitched. No. This was a good thing for her. The longer the humans did nothing the more she could prepare. It was to her advantage to let them think whatever they wanted as long as they didn't try interfering for a little while longer. Tomorrow she would get oil. The day after she would have her armor and more bullets. That's when she intended to start. If she didn't provoke a response before then it would make her job much easier.
In other words, she needed to stop glaring at them!
Imelda forced herself to look away, to pretend that their presence didn't bother her. If they did fire on her the shield unit on her back would protect her more than long enough for her to return the favor. So she focused on her data pad again as the humans continued to orbit her. She could feel their eyes. They were studying her. She swallowed. Imelda had to ignore them. So what could she do with her data pad to distract herself?
Oil. The mare had to decide where she was going to get oil. Imelda needed it for its high carbon content so she could turn her iron into steel and she needed the sulfur to make her bullets. So where was she going to get it? The answers were not encouraging.
All of the small continent's oil deposits were either off-shore or along the northern coast. Imelda wanted to avoid the ocean because war ships tended to have big guns and she didn't want to put herself in range of humanity's strongest weapons yet. Also, she didn't want to build her own oil pump and tap the reserve herself. If humans were already pumping it, she hoped she could simply swipe their supply. But where were they keeping the oil they extracted? Imelda searched her data pad for the answer.
Of course the only refinery on the entire western half of the continent was just outside the only major city on the western half of the continent. And that was also right on the coast.
Imelda's ears pinned as she sighed in frustration. That wasn't good. If Imelda wanted to tap an oil reserve herself, she was heading for the coast. If she intended to steal human oil, she was heading for the coast. She didn't have a choice unless she ditched the oil plan entirely and tried to get her carbon and sulfur somewhere else. She growled and looked away from her data pad to see if the helicopter situation had changed. It hadn't. The three were still hovering just out of reach of her bare hooves and appeared to be more interested in her digging machine as it continued to level the area. Imelda snorted and returned her attention to her resource problem.
She could try raiding a fertilizer plant instead to get her sulfur, but what about the carbon? She didn't need huge amounts of it. It didn't take much to turn iron into steel. She asked her computer for possible sources. The first suggestion was the air itself. Earth's atmosphere was 0.05% carbon dioxide, but her fabricators could easily separate the molecule. Imelda considered it, however filtering air was slow. The next suggestion was to cut down a forest. Earth trees were packed with carbon. The mare eyed her surroundings skeptically and noted the very apparent lack of trees in the area. Much of Australia was a desert so forests were going to be in short supply around here.
The final suggestion made Imelda's heart stop. It must have been the worst thing her computer had ever suggested.
Humans.
Humans were carbon based life forms like the majority of sentient life in the universe. So their cells were packed with it. She could throw humans into her fabricators and have them broken down to extract the valuable carbon she needed to make her steel armor.
Imelda felt light-headed. Something threatened to come up her throat. Was she getting sick? An image appeared in her mind. She saw herself wearing a suit of armor made from countless human corpses stitched together like some kind of... depraved art piece. She stumbled even though she was already seated. The mare stared at the ground and swallowed. She shook her head.
That was NOT an option.
Oil would be her source of carbon and sulfur. But which source would she go for? The refinery or the oil field?
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Sergeant Matthews wasn't a war veteran. Most of his military career had been pretty boring. Sure, there had been some emergency deployments. There had been the big flood several years ago and the nasty wildfires more recently that needed the military to organize the evacuations. Most of his career had been training, responding to natural disasters, and sitting around.
Today he got a mission he could have never imagined. A top secret assignment that, at first, he was sure was meant to be a joke.
He and his team were to observe and possibly make contact with aliens?
The Sergeant wanted to laugh. They had enough problems with angry citizens screaming at them for "lying" about the meteor. Australia was a mess and emergency services were already stretched thin trying to reestablish order and confidence in the system. Was this some poorly thought-up plan to raise morale with a crazy joke?
Once he saw his orders, and the sheer scale of the total operation, Matthews began to feel something in his bones. Was the alien story a cover for something even more serious? It was the only thing he could believe. It was ridiculous. They were evacuating Mount Magnet, a mining town of just over 600 people, and blocking all roads into an area within 50 kilometers of the town. And the wording of the orders was disturbing. Anyone who resisted was to be moved by "force". That wasn't a term that came up even during natural disaster relief. Normally the order was to simply leave those who couldn't be convinced. It was more important to save as many people as possible over fighting with someone who wanted to die.
It couldn't be aliens. He wasn't stupid enough to believe that. But he was a soldier and he followed orders. If this was coming down from the chain of command then he would see it through. Sergeant Matthews got his team together, briefed them, deflected their questions and disbelief as best he could, and got them in the choppers.
Armed with cameras instead of guns, him and his team left the airbase in Perth and headed north-east toward Mount Magnet. There wasn't a lot of chatter on the way. He knew his men felt odd about the whole situation. Obviously their orders were a lie, which meant they really had no idea what they were in for. That thought began to fester in Matthews. They were being sent into the unknown because the higher ups didn't trust them. It was insulting. It could even get them killed depending on what they encountered. He eyed the stupid cameras they had been assigned. Maybe they didn't expect the mission would be dangerous. Matthews glanced at the men in the helicopter with him. He bitterly hoped they all came home alive.
They flew over the town of Mount Magnet. The army was already there dragging everyone out. A lot of people were trying to fight. Demanding an explanation the soldiers didn't have. Sergeant Matthews watched out the window as a young soldier tried to calmly explain to a civilian that if he did not comply he would be arrested. Matthews frowned. This was a mess. What was happening?
Their destination was not the town however. Their trio of helicopters was headed further east up the mountain towards the mine that employed most of the people who lived here. They hadn't traveled more than a minute out from the town before he heard his radio buzz.
"Uh... Sergeant? Have you ever seen anything like this?"
Matthews stood from his seat and leaned over the pilot's shoulder. What he saw on the horizon made him blink. There was something off about it.
There was some kind of huge crane or some other machine with lots of cables supporting a long body. They were too far away to make out the details, but it was absolutely enormous. Had he ever seen a piece of equipment that large? And that thought sent him down a chain of questions. Mount Magnet didn't have a mine big enough for this kind of operation. It was a small mine, from what little he knew. What was going on?
Then they saw the alien.
"What... the... fuck?" he mumbled. He was only vaguely aware of the others in the chopper gathering behind his shoulders and staring ahead too.
"S-sir?" someone said.
"Get the cameras..." Sergeant Matthews whispered.
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Imelda felt like she was bird watching. The helicopters just kept going around and around. It made her a little dizzy. The tension of the situation had since melted away into a tedium. A second and third cart of minerals had been sent back to her ship, making the current fill the fourth load. The humans didn't seem to be doing anything but watching. Though maybe they had reinforcements on the way.
The unicorn sighed. She had to make another decision. Where was she going to get the oil? Was she going to head far north to the oil fields and pump it herself or would she head south and steal the oil from a major refinery at the edge of a city? Pumping it herself was pretty much guaranteed success, but she would have to have her digger disassembled for the steel to make the pump. It would only really cost her time. However, stealing from the oil refinery didn't require her to build new equipment and it would be even faster because she didn't have to wait for a pump to extract the oil. She could just take entire storage vessels the humans filled in advance.
The oil refinery was very appealing. It'd be a quick operation. Get in, get the oil, get out. The problem was the nearby city and the fact she was going to be raiding a human owned refinery. Imelda glanced at one of the helicopters that was keeping an eye on her. For now the humans weren't doing anything, but if she robbed a refinery they would definitely start fighting back immediately. However, if she went north to drill her own oil instead, they might just stay neutral for the time being.
The mare bit her lip and considered. Did it matter? Yeah, her shield would likely shrug off most of what they had. However, she at least wanted her armor first which she would not be able to make until after she got the oil. A day too late. Then again, preparing a military response took time. It was possible the humans would take days to actually start fighting back even after they realized they needed to do so.
Two other factors played into the decision as well.
Attacking the oil refinery would also deal a blow to the human war effort. Energy was the life blood of civilization and machines. If she didn't just steal the oil, but also demolished the only refinery on the western half of the continent, the human military would be crippled before it ever took a shot at her. It could be a powerful opening move in the campaign.
Yet none of those facts compared to the last one. Hitting the oil refinery required her to enter a city. A place densely packed with civilians. Non-combatants would certainly die.
Imelda kicked at the ground idly as the roar of her digging machine continued to fill the air.
She was going to massacre helpless little aliens. Imelda had already accepted that. It was just... she didn't want to start with civilians. She wanted to exchange blows with their military a few times before she went crushing their cities. There was a... process. An order of steps. Yeah. That's what it was. Imelda couldn't skip steps. It wasn't... proper.
Imelda took a deep breath and closed her eyes for a moment.
She was being stupid. This was war and every last human was an enemy. There was no such thing as civilians. Not in this conflict. She was stalling. She was being weak.
Imelda grit her teeth. No more stalling. No more wasting time. She would attack the oil refinery and make it clear to the humans she was their enemy and she was to be feared. She snorted with determination. Tomorrow she would make the first real move.
Imelda Noble stared at the readout. This could be a problem. She hadn't gotten as much iron as she anticipated. It was far from none, but apparently the mine had about as much gold as it did iron. While gold was valuable for making computers and electronics, it wasn't what she wanted right now. Suddenly, Imelda feared she'd have to spend another day mining to get the amount of iron she needed. With what she had now, once she raided the oil refinery, she would have to decide whether to use the steel to make bullets or armor. She probably wouldn't have enough steel for both. But that decision was obvious. If she got oil from the refinery, the fighting would have started, and you couldn't fight without ammunition. She would have to make the bullets.
So she was reconsidering attacking the refinery.
For a day at least.
She growled and stomped to her bedroom where she threw herself into the pod on her back. A hoof fell across her forehead while her mane spread out across her pillow. The day had been a mix of tension and boredom. The human helicopters had left after an hour or two and not returned. Imelda had stayed there watching the digger work until the sun started to set, then she stopped the machine and returned to her ship. It was night and her ship's shield generator ensured she had nothing to worry about. Being powered by the hardlight reactor meant it was borderline impossible to overwhelm. The humans could do nothing about her ship itself. Though they could amass an army around the door and ambush her as soon as she stepped outside.
For some reason that mental image amused Imelda and she chuckled into the darkness.
"But what am I going to do?" she thought aloud somberly. Launching an attack with only 100 bullets seemed ridiculous. Though she could always smash things with her hooves. The mare lifted a leg and gazed at the tiny grooves ringing her foot. They were nothing more than near imperceptible lines to her, but to a human they were probably fully usable as handholds. She had now seen a human. They were so small. They were real.
Her leg fell to the bed with a dull thump.
"I've gone insane," she concluded.
She shrugged. So what she didn't have as much iron as she hoped? Was the armor really that important? Why was she so obsessed with it? Maybe she was too preoccupied with defense and not taking her offense seriously enough. The gold gave her options. She could think about making other robots to help her sooner rather than later. Not that she had a real schedule for the war figured out, but she hadn't even considered making drones to help her fight so quickly.
Imelda growled and held her head. She rolled onto her side and curled up. It was too much. She was thinking too much. This was hard. So hard...
The mare sighed and relaxed into the sweet smelling sheets. She was going to age like crazy if she kept this up. She had to stop thinking. Just follow her instincts. Stop trying to be some great general with plans within plans. She was just Imelda, a unicorn mercenary. She was just doing a job. Nothing more.
Tomorrow she would attack the oil refinery. Her goal was to steal as much oil as she could and to destroy the facility. Then she'd set the fabricators to make her ammunition and explosives. The heavy armor could wait. She could trust her shields to protect her for a little while at least.
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Author's Note:
In case you haven't figured it out, this is a slow burn kind of story. I'm taking my time building up to the action. Not because I'm trying to raise tension or sense of the stakes, but just because I want to highlight what I think would be the most realistic progression of events. If I move the story too quickly I feel that some of that aspect would be lost.
Also, I do not live in Australia so I'm sure I'm not going to describe/portray it accurately in multiple areas. Though I'm trying to write this story as though it were taking place in the real world, please understand that there are limits to how much I can or am willing to research to do so. My accuracy is limited and I am going to take shortcuts. I apologize to any Australian readers who might look at this and be scratching your heads in confusion at my bizarre mistakes. Also, I did not set this story in Australia as an insult against the country or its people. I'm not trying to subtly tell you I hate Australia. I really didn't know anything about the nation/continent before, other than that it existed. I set it there because it honestly seemed like a logical place for the story to start. Assuming this story goes on long enough, you will see the violence spread to other continents and nations.
