Revolution 2.0

Redmond, WA, USA

2 June, 2030

“ONETWOTHREEFOUR!”

The chant was deafening, literally. Mick had just thrown a perfect spiral through the closed glass window of the Marine recruiting station. Officially designated the “Multisensory Overload Device, Type 3 Mark 4”, the plummet-shaped object had fins to help stabilize it and to protect the strobes mounted behind the tail. The nose was a 16 cm HDPE blunt with a 12mm chisel-tip tungsten spike in the center. Overall the thing looked like what Warner Bros. thought an aerial bomb looked like. The sides were an HDPE screen that covered three highly efficient (meaning very loud) speakers that were currently blaring Pantera's “Fucking Hostile” at 200 decibels while the three tail-mounted strobes splashed 600,000 candelas of flickering red, blue and white light around the room. We called it a Party Bomb.
The remaining windows of the room, the entire front wall of which was a series of floor to ceiling windows, did not blow out. They did vibrate in time to the music though. Even through my “active protection” earplugs I could hear it as though I was at a concert. The screams of those inside were mostly drowned out by the beat and the sound of Phil Anselmo's rage.
“Go on three.” I subvocalized and the throat mike dutifully transmitted my words to the rest of my eight man squad. “One...Two...THREE!”

Bob and I leaned into the window's gaping frame from opposite sides, our Thompson M200's at the ready. I fired first as my sight picture settled on a back lit figure still wearing a dress cover. The three .460 Rowland hollow point rounds blew through the figure in a welter of black gore, the compensator flaring a dull yellow-orange against the blinding parti-color of the strobes. The figure dropped like a sack of potatoes and I started searching for more targets.

The ROE was “No civilians killed” so we passed over anyone not obviously in uniform. Orange flared in the corner of my vision as Bob Partridge fired on a target. I saw a figure with a pistol out crouched behind one of the flimsy sheet metal and particle board desks, just his weapon and part of his head visible.
I caressed the trigger twice with the front sight centered on the front of the desk about where I figured his body would be. The six holes appeared in the black metal and the gun dropped below the level of the desk.
“ITFITSTHEATTITUDE, IFYOUCOULDSEEYOURSELF, YOUPUTYOUONASHELF” the overwhelming blare of thrash metal overwhelmed even the sound of gunfire.

I could sense the flashing muzzles of the Tobe's team coming through the front door, firing at uniformed figures out of my field of vision. Today's op was about sending a message. And send it we would by God. Scanning from right to left and back again I could see no one standing and no one in uniform that wasn't leaking claret like a crushed tomato.
Mercifully the auditory and visual assault wound down after a few more seconds as the capacitor in the core of the Party Bomb drained. The party that rages twice as hard, rages for half as long.
Bob and I called out “CLEAR!” as the room returned to normal illumination and the whimpering and crying of the wounded and the partially deafened could finally be heard.

“Clear.” came the muted response from Tobe.

“One prisoner.” came a third response from Eazy. I'd stationed Easy and Jake at the rear of the building to catch anyone who tried to leg it out the back.

“Tango or Charley?” I asked

“Service. A lance corporal who understood the better part of valor.”

Christ, we're not set up to hold or care for prisoners.

“Kill him. Quietly.”

A pause, “Sir?”

“You have your orders Troop.”

“Aye-Aye sir.”

A few seconds went by.

Jake commed “Clear.”.

“Tobe, card the dead and distribute the gold. Mick, you and Bob start tagging the exterior. Easy, get to tagging the interior.”
I got an acknowledgment from Tobe, but dead air from Easy.

“Easy?” I asked.

Nothing.

“Easy god damn it, respond.” I tried to push as much of my command voice through the throat mic as I could. Subvoalization does not lend itself to a command presence.

“W-WILCO, sir.” came the stammered response from the young Yupik.

“Be quick people we have 60 seconds to wrap up and bail.”

Mick and Bob were already breaking out the cans of red and black spraypaint. I used the barrel of my piece to clear the remaining glass from the window, then hoisted myself through the gaping maw and into the cordite-hazed abattoir of the recruiting station.

Tobe's team was busy with Tobe checking the dead and making sure the civs were all alive and at least semi-conscious, Fred dropping death cards on the dead and stripping one rank insignia from each corpse while Sam pressed a one ounce gold heart into the hands of each civilian. The hearts were cast with bas relief words on he front;

IN SYMPATHY

AND WITH GREAT

SORROW FOR

YOUR TRAUMA.

.999 PURE

2 OZ

and on the back

THIS GIFT IS

UNTAXABLE.

THIS GIFT DOES NOT

CONSTITUTE AN

ADMISSION OF

LIABILITY FOR ANY

INJURY.

The death cards were all aces and eights and all spades. The backs were Alaska blue with gold bordering and a gold-limned faceless reaper on the back, a sword in one hand and a scythe in the other.

I started working my way through the back offices checking for hiding civs and marines. Easy and Jake passed me coming down the hall, having swept the rooms automatically as they came. Easy looked bad, like someone had just killed his puppy.

As they broke out their paint, I finished sweeping the offices, checking under desks and in cabinetry. I found a civ in the last office.

Thirtyish, dirty blonde and terrified; an ID card on a red lanyard stood out against her cream blouse. Her legs covered by a knee-length navy blue skirt as she crouched underneath her desk.

“Ma'am, can you hear me?” I said loudly.

Nod.

“Ma'am, I need you to respond verbally.”

“Y-Yes, I can hear you” she said with the slightly overloud tone of a person whose hearing hasn't yet returned to normal.

“Good, I need you to come out from there, slowly with your hands up please.”

She complied and I got a good look at her. She was tall for a woman, blue eyed behind the large-framed spectacles that had become fashionable a couple of years back.

“I'm going to look at your ID, please do not move.”

She nodded and held her hands up higher, but she flinched when I reached for her ID. It was pale blue and in addition to her mugshot it was printed;

SANDERSON, JUDITH

CIVILIAN EMPLOYEE

876541328

I let the card swing back to her as I backed away. “Judy? I need you to walk to the front room with your hands up, OK? No one will hurt you if you move slowly and make no trouble. OK?”

She nodded nervously, then caught herself and said “Yes. OK.”

I spoke into the throat mike “One Charley coming out. Unarmed, low threat, sit her down and pay her.”

“WILCO” came Tobe's response.

As I walked out of the room, I took a carbon fiber cylinder out of my warbag and placed it on the desk. Grasping the handle on the top, I twisted and pulled the top off, placing it back in the bag. From the open container I slid out a dingy white cylinder made of styrofoam, it was a little less than a half meter tall and 16 cm across and aside from the initiator and small blasting charge it was filled with 2 kilos of human excrement. The top was a clear plastic dome with a motion sensor and an RFID receiver under it.

I placed the shit bomb on the center of the desk and then put the container back in the bag. I closed the door on my way out and then flipped the switch on the activator. The next person to open that door would get a BIG surprise.

Returning to the front office I saw all the survivors lined up against the wall, each clutching, with varying degrees of trepidation and alertness, their golden hearts. The two largest walls were covered in sloppy spray paint letters;

NO MORE TOOLS

NO MORE WAR

and

WHO IS YOUR REAL ENEMY?

END THE INVASION!

I knew similar slogans were going up on the exterior of the building.

“Ladies and gentlemen” I shouted

“Boss we have Charlies inbound” Bob's voice sibilant in my earwig.

“We are sorry that you had to witness this today, please exit the building in an orderly fashion to reduce the risk of injury. Help each other and be safe. Do not return to or stay in the building, it is about to be unsafe for human habitation.”

Tobe's team and Easy's team were already on their way out the back, having delivered their shit bombs to the offices, break room and supply closet. Judy was up with her eyes streaming tears as she tried to help the less coherent civs up and chivying them out the front door. She seemed to be trying very hard not to look at any of the bodies.

I trotted out the back, passing the body of a young man in the khaki blouse and blue trousers of a Marine dress uniform, his head had been split open with what looked like an axe. I could see his brain through the rent in the back of his skull. The red smears on the back of his blouse showed where Easy had wiped off his 'hawk.

All eight of us loaded up into a white van with tinted windows, marked in maroon English and Arabic words identifying it as belonging to the Western Islamic Cultural Center and the crescent and star. As Tobe rolled off into traffic, Easy began to weep quietly.