The Butcher of Del Mar Rae
By the time the Phibs were strafing the
buildings at Del Mar Rae, I had fallen back to the Government complex. A one-story hallway connected the
A half-open tower?
Yeah – half open. It’s a military
description. It means that the back wall
was reinforced concrete, curving around about two hundred degrees of the
tower’s circumference, but the front was windows and balconies. Sure, it could have been designed
more strategically, but it was hard enough luring government lackeys out there
with the…
Do not mock those who fell at
Del Mar Rae.
I’m sorry I didn’t mean lackeys; they were good people, but they weren’t
soldiers. And
it is hard being out so far.
So you were alone when you fell back to the Government Complex?
No, not alone - I was one of three mobile units. The rest of our company was
either killed or pinned down somewhere, but I wasn’t alone until after we
gained the
Please don’t call it the clerking tower.
That’s not its name.
OK, OK, the
If you were alone at that point, how could you really be “in
charge”?
I didn’t know at the time whether there was anyone to be in charge of, I
only brought it up because I know its one of those
things officials worry about. Let’s just
say that for the record, I knew at the time that I was the ranking unit.
Please go on.
There was so little resistance by that point, the Phibs
were bringing up sixty-fours within two hundred meters of the buildings, the
more daring even hovering for a few seconds while they fired into the offices. About sixty-four clerks screaming and running around
pell-mell. There was smoke inside, and a
few small fires. It seemed the director
and her girl Friday were the only level heads there, and I caught up with them
as they closed the Vera shield around the residence tower. From the third floor of the
Our own Vera shield was out of action and the Phibs
already had the ground floor, so it was looking pretty bleak. The clerks were being armed and the director
was organizing them the best she could, but they were untrained and in a
half-open tower like I said.
I have to pause here. I think if
I’m going to explain my actions, I have to say how I viewed the whole Ferran System, because that’s really what I made my
decision on. See, Del Mar Rae had a long range ion cannon, even though that system had only two
small colonies. Both of them were
primarily research bases, on two different inner planets.
There was another settlement on the north continent.
Yes, that’s right – there was a religious utopian settlement. I’m not really sure
what religion. I was
only assigned there a couple of months before the Phibs
came. Anyway, there were only about
three million people in the Ferran System all together, which is my point.
If that’s your point, I don’t get it.
The cannon at Del Mar Rae could hit anything inside Ferran
Oort, which is about the same diameter as Sol’s. So it’s obvious that battery wasn’t for the protection of
the natives.
Are you saying the locals didn’t benefit from the battery?
Sure, the locals benefited from
it, and probably some came out who wouldn’t have otherwise, but there are several planets with large cities that don’t have a canon
like that. Expensive. The way I figured it, Del Mar Rae had a long range ion cannon because Ferra held a strategic place to
the Republic. Ferra was like one of
those tiny islands during World War Two, where they
had to fight over them not because of their intrinsic worth, but they were such
strategic points for resupply and other…
World War What?
World War Two…it was a big war back on Earth,
the first nuclear war we had – in 1945.
The Earth wasn’t scorched until 2082. I know that for a fact.
There wasn’t a scorching. In the
first nuclear war, there were only two bombs total.
[Interviewer makes face.]
Hey, you can look it up if you don’t believe me. There were only two nuclear bombs in the
whole war. It doesn’t matter. You can write it for the record: I believed
that if Ferra fell, the Phibs try for more; maybe
trillions would die.
Go on, please.
As I looked over the lip of the tower, I saw that the Phibs
were ready to storm the building. I was
looking down because there was this arm of water connected to the bay. It was ornamental really, a fountain and deep
pool between the two towers, but I was wondering if it could
be used somehow. The section of
the building connecting the towers was only one story, and the Phibs had it already.
I was wondering if the clerks would jump into the pool en masse, maybe
some of them could make it to the residence tower and be
saved, or maybe swim out to the bay, escape, and go guerilla. It was a long shot, but if a Phib battalion was going to storm the building, all of
those clerks were going to die. Two of the clerks were watching me and got the same idea. They jumped and were shot,
ruining any chance of an en masse surprise.
That was when I noticed the rack.
On the open side of the tower, the third floor and those above were
wider than first and second floors, and underneath the third floor balcony was
this rack. I admit by that point I was
looking at survival, a place to hide out the mopping up job and go guerilla.
Sounds like you came up with an excuse to save your own skin.
No – that’s not some piece of cowardice I
made up on the spot. It’s in our manual. In bad situations, the military wants a few
to survive, and this looked bad.
The rack was made of heavy steel rods and stuffed with any odds and ends that they hadn’t used in years. There was just enough space between the junk
and the floor above for a man to hide.
Once I was secured in the rack, I saw two
things immediately. One, there was no
battalion. There wasn’t even a
company. Our soldiers had done a good
job somewhere, really cut them down.
Those sixty-four clerks with rifles and side arms could do well against
what was left.
There were a hundred and six Amphibians.
Huh? A hundred
and six? Well, that may be so,
but we had the superior position. We
held the building and obviously they wanted it
intact. And I
was in an excellent spot to snipe a bunch as they began the attack, dividing
their attention front and rear.
You are not here because you shot amphibians.
Yes, I understand I’m not in
here because I sniped amphibians. I know what I did. I know what they’re calling me in the
media. But
that’s the other thing I saw. I saw they
had rounded up civilians who had picked a bad day to be out of the
building. They were going to use them as
shields when they stormed the