C09: The Tunnel of Love
To all our loyal soldiers,
Wow, that actually went better than I thought it would, and here I was about to throw you all under the bus.
One of our loyal soldiers, Cosima volunteered to venture under the tunnels of the Smoke to plant a DET charge to collapse it. I do love our loyal angels, their wings will surely mask the fact that their only personality traits are servitude and getting me coffee.
I was really surprised with Cosima’s ability to sneak past the androids, it was almost like I was watching a fish swimming gracefully through the water, avoiding tin cans. This led her past the border of the Smoke where she was able to plant the DET charge with no problem. The second she did this, I realised that she would be a loose end. So I detonated the charge as soon as she got a few steps from it.
Miraculously she was able to survive that with a rock pinning her leg to the rubble. While her cries of pain were giving me a little giggle, I knew I had to finish the job myself.
After sneaking in through the tunnels, I found her trying to saw her leg off with a sharp rock. As soon as she saw me, she realised what was about to happen. Her only response was “You've all benefited from my work at one point, so good luck without me!” while flipping me off. Which was about the second funniest thing I’ve heard before emptying a magazine into someone’s brain matter.
There we go, loose end tied up neatly. Yay!
After the reports of the tunnel collapsing reached the Council of 20 they were quite pleased. They even talked about promoting me to the Council if this keeps up (which I know is absolute bullshit, they have been promising me the position for years with no follow-through).
So, the coverup was a success, all due to my quick thinking and your minor input!
Now that this is all over with, we have new horizons to conquer.
Word has it that the Cultivation Society and Underworld Collective have signed a treaty to launch a joint attack against Rivers End.
We need to account for this when we defend against them. We have a couple of options though.
We can either: attack from Atlas, attack from Rivers End, or sit back and focus on defence.
Attacking from Atlas would allow us to protect our capital while losing the least amount of forces. While this sounds like a no-brainer on paper, there’s a bit of a caveat to this. It leaves Rivers End vulnerable and if we’re going to win this battle, we will need to turn this into a war of attrition which means making the target (Rivers End) harder to obtain. We could even take the Smoke, The Circuits, or the Reeds if we go about this right. However, the worst case scenario would be losing Atlas so this might have to be a necessary precaution.
Attacking from Rivers End will lengthen the battle and tire both forces out, which is what we want. However, this does leave Atlas vulnerable if they decide to take it first. While that would be an unlikely scenario, it can’t be ruled out. This could lead to us potentially taking the Circuits or the Roots if we play our pieces right. However, leaving Atlas to backup forces makes me a bit queasy.
If we focus on defence, dividing our stronger forces between both territories, we would have just enough to hold both Atlas and Rivers End (providing that nothing takes us by surprise). However, this would mean that we can’t take any additional territories and we’d be having to defend both positions from more angles throughout the entirety of the battle. If one front is lost, that would lead the rest of the forces to just defend our last territory which is a horrible position to be in no matter what. This would be placing all our chips on the other side atrophying which is a very risky bet.
No matter what you choose, just know that this will be a gruelling fight. I’m just hoping your strategy will give us the edge we need.
Jerit | Head of Public Relations and Target Elimination