Chapter 1
Granny always fed the drones on Sundays. She would waddle up the street, right after eight bells, to the bombed-out square with a little bag of dried potato peels in her hand. The same bag too, every week - you remember, Lieutenant, how the old crones always used to wash them and dry them, the plastic bags! Ayee, these young soldiers around us don’t remember, but we do, Philip, we do!
So, she’d start spreading the potato peels around, right, and these drones, they’d flock to her! Suspicious public activity, yes? Subversive, probably! But they never shot her. Maybe, that first day, maybe there was a human shitbag behind the monitor and that’s why they didn’t shoot her. Maybe the shitbags had grandmothers too, once, hmm.
So the same drones that maimed my cousin Tom for picking up a stick from the ground, and that almost killed my friend Cho, the same drones would flock around my granny every Sunday, and watch her spread potato peels around. Can you believe it. They’d dip their little sensors to the bread, they’d follow her slow movements. They’d hover around her head, guns twitching but never firing. Maybe there was a very confused algorithm somewhere trying to classify her actions, trying to figure her out, but I personally think that it’s fucking boring to monitor a hundred drones, at least when you’re not having fun killing innocents, and that this was one of the few entertainments available on Shithead Base to some noob analyst.
I love my Granny, I mean who doesn’t love their Granny, but when she did this, I thought she’d gone insane, completely retarded. I tried hiding her bag, everything, but she wouldn’t stop. I shouted at her that she was a fucking dried up psycho cunt and to get back into the fucking house, but she wouldn’t budge.
Women, eh? Yeah, you laugh. But, never underestimate our women. Never.
More and more drones flocked to her. I guess she was the only show in town. Two more would come next Sunday. Another one the Sunday after that. They’d start showing up before she did, just hovering around, taking potshots at stray dogs and biding their time.
Then, one day, she didn’t come to the square at eight bells.
But the PS39 did. Straight down into the square. Everything gone in fucking seconds, gotta have been 80% of all the drones in that village. That Sunday, right after eight bells, the resistance took the town back, and you know the rest. Me and Cho didn’t know jack squat about the plan, we were barely fifteen, but even so, we became men that day. Put the first kill notches on our belts. And we did it all with stolen kalashnis and homebrewed cocktails, not the nice toys you boys have now.
But through all that happened after, the marches, the fucking trenches, the capital and all that went down there. I never forgot Granny. Never forgot what she did, how she walked over the rubble up to that square each Sunday, how no one suspected her. And if you think this is a patriotic speech about the strong daughters of our culture, sure, but you listen good to what I am saying here.
Never underestimate anyone. We’ve got the shitheads where we want them now. This time, we’re the ones with drones, and the fancy weapons and they can lick their wounds in bombed out shelters in their ravaged towns. But they’re plotting things, it’s in their fucking nature, and they won’t forget what happened in the resurgence, what we did to them in the capital. So I don’t care if it’s the sweetest little chubby-cheeked boy or an old granny carrying a pie, you shoot those mother fuckers if they even breathe out of rhythm, you hear me!
But yeah, it’s a patriotic speech too, so let’s end on that note.
Our women, or mothers, our daughters.
They can show amazing courage, sometimes you’d almost think that they had more balls than men! They won’t always be able to stomach what needs to be done, though, you have to realize that - Granny helped my Father plan that first strike, but she couldn’t really handle what happened after when we went into the cities with the bombs. It’s just part of what they are, women. She kept arguing with me about the hangings until had to shut her down hard, that was ugly. I love her though. You know, once she accepted that there was nothing she could do to change my mind, she’s started to try to save my soul.
She’ll call me over the vid-station in my office each Sunday morning to pray with me.
It’s always at eight bells too. She’s old and daft now, but with this thing, she’s like clockwork.
