> U: BN
TS: May 21st, 2170, 15:29:17
Arcturus Stream / Arcturus / Arcturus Station
Captain Ryder came back, as promised, a bag over one shoulder and you over the other, looking about as happy as you did yesterday.
She proceeded to set up a projector in the middle of the room and interface it with her omni-tool, bringing up a projection of Nouveau Roma. You turned the lights back on, started objecting-- again. I've said my piece to you, but for the sake of it being present in these journals every time you and your superiors pour over them:
You're a joke of a psychologist, and I will never understand how you managed to graduate with all those degrees decorating your desk, let alone be assigned to my case. I have no interest in cooperating with you, now or in the future, and that you were so quick, so willing to resort to involuntary medication despite my MANY PROTESTS against any form of medication has managed to severely damage my faith in therapy as a whole. Am I damaged? Yes. Would I like to talk about it? No. Do I want your help with any of this? No. Absolutely not. In fact, I'd really appreciate it if you stop trying to talk to me at all, because I have nothing left to say to you.
Now then.
The Captain turned out the lights again and continued on. She pointed out key facts about our capital, size of twenty square miles, the planned, gridded layout, the docking bay near the center of the colony, the forest to the east, the buffer zone between the colony and the forest, and the farmland spreading out north, west and south. Then, several red ships appeared, circling the colony, with the two of the three largest landing to the north and west, the last landing in the port in the center.
I corrected her; the ships came low, over the forest, not straight down where our radar would have spotted them. She looked at me with this expression that, irritatingly, I still cannot place, and then corrected the simulation, asking me if it looked right. It did, and she continued. The slavers (she did not say Batarians) were methodical; a large force immediately took the center of the town, firing artillery on many of the larger buildings clustered around the space port to quickly get those segments of the population out of the way, as well as destroying certain administrative structures and both our emergency medical center and armory. Meanwhile, a smaller segment covered the south and east while the bulk of the forces combed the city from the west to the east and the north to the south simultaneously, killing anyone who resisted or was too young to come on their own and rounding up those who came voluntarily and bringing them toward the space port. Occasionally, buildings were bombed or set on fire, seemingly random in the destruction. To destroy morale, she hypothesized. It certainly worked.
She asked me again if this was accurate. I couldn't tell her much-- I had been in the forest with Cai and Valerija, keeping our distance, and thus could only tell her what I saw of the smaller forces to the east. I told her about the kill zones the Batarians set up, wherein they predictably slaughtered anyone who entered them. I told her how most didn't try to cross it after the first failed mass breakout: A mixed group of adults and children had made a break for it, the adults doing everything they could to draw attention to themselves and the children keeping low, trying to run for the woods.
I didn't mention that my father had been apart of the group of adults that had gone ahead at a different point, one of many distraction groups. It had been a futile and stupid effort, anyway. The slavers fired artillery down on them, and went through the bodies after, shooting any that appeared anything less than completely mangled.
Swiftly moving on. The slaver's operation had gone on for eight hours before the SSV Einstein arrived. When they finally made it, their fighters were able to quickly destroy the rag-tag collection of ships in orbit around Mindoir, and the Captain elected to send her ground force to take the town back, knowing that the three carriers on the ground would likely be full of prisoners and thus they couldn't risk destroying them. The ground teams landed south of Nouveau Roma, and tried to storm it, hoping to break through their weakest front, but again, the presence of slaves stopped them in their tracks. It was made worse when the Batarians began publicly executing slaves in front of the marines, letting groups “escape” toward them only to be mowed down. Destroying morale. Effective here, too.
Finally, the Captain had to adjust, and thus ordered fighters to begin attacking around the edges of the city where she presumed the humans living within had already been removed toward the center, and with the assistance of the ground forces, slowly began forcing the Batarians to move closer to the heart of the city. It was during this time the two carriers stationed to the north and west took off and were allowed to flee with whatever prisoners they had managed to grab-- she refused to order them fired upon. The Batarians, always clever, blocked off streets to slow the marines progress, trying to buy time to load as many of the slaves onto the main carrier in the center of the colony. The Captain used this “bought” time to completely surround the center of the city, and when it was sufficiently surrounded, to make a last push into the center of the colony, mowing down any not already in the space port. The stranded slavers were either captured or killed, with the rest escaping with the carrier when it finally took off.
The total time of The Raid, counting the eight hours before The Einstein arrived, was thirty-seven hours.
I immediately began asking questions. Why not come through the forest? She explained that they couldn't gain any accurate information about it, and didn't know if there were any slavers lying in wait within, as they had spotted groups combing through it. Yes, there had been groups going through it; the three of us had been spotted while trying to get a clearer picture of the colony, and had to run to avoid being killed. I had expected them to go deeper into the forest to try to find us, so we had gone to the north-west edge of the trees, where they met with the northern farms, and then followed the farms back into the edge of town, where the majority of the fighting and pillaging had already come and gone. She conceded that this was a good move on my part, but that the marines didn't know the farms or the forest, and thus it wasn't viable for them to try a tactic they didn't even realize was open to them.
Why not try to get better intelligence, then? She said that they had wasted enough time as it was, and she had made the call to act now rather than later. I told her that that had been a mistake, and she didn't argue my point, only stuck to her belief that they felt they could not wait any longer.
Why not target the carriers? She looked confused at the suggestion, reiterating the point that they were operating under the (correct) assumption that there were colonists on those ships already. I corrected myself: to damage, not destroy. Any attacks on the carrier would have inevitably led to friendly deaths, she said. Yes, but it also would have forced the Batarians to leave to protect their carriers, I pointed out. Any deaths from friendly fire would be acceptable collateral damage if it forced the carriers away sooner.
We were quiet for a long time after that. I don't think the Captain had been expecting me to suggest that. You spoke up again, saying you believed that was enough for the day.
The Captain agreed, packing the projector back up. Before you both left, she asked me how much collateral damage could they have caused before it wouldn't be considered “acceptable” any longer. My attention was elsewhere, and by the time I even remembered the question, you were both gone.
Captain, I don't know if they let you read this or not, but Nouveau Roma doesn't exist any more. There are other towns on the colony of course, which mostly escaped The Raid except for smaller bands that had been more intent on killing instead of slaving, so Mindoir will likely rebuild in the future, but our capital is nothing but a lot of burning skeletons and decaying corpses.
I'm the only one left.
Any amount of collateral damage would have been acceptable if it led to but one more colonist here with me today.
> U: /EN