The Battle For Sparta Command

[Evil Knevil]

I wrote this ages ago, but never released it. I am rephrasing and reviewing parts of it, so it will come in installments. Please Please comment on it!

The Battle for Sparta Command


Screams muffled by helmets, screams not muffled by helmets. The roar of burning buildings and the crack of concrete shattering like china. These were the sounds that filled my head and make me quail in terror. My platoon had already lost 3 men in an attack on a transformer station. This battle was a living nightmare, men falling right and centre as bombs exploded all around the main complexes and roads. Grenades flew like hail, and the miserable hiss of gatling lasers was punctuated by the cracks made by shredder guns.
The fighting was made much worse by the shape of these totalitarian monoliths. The close space between the housing centres had created a hells' maw where entire divisions were devoured.
I, we had to capture this squat tower so that we could have a clear punch at the Headquarters of this damned hole. As I already said, much of my platoon had been lost. Along with remnants of the 3rd Gatling Laser Battalion we had been trying to crack open the building and clean it out. All day we had sent waves of men and hundreds simply disappeared. The barricades and defensive positions mowed our men down. They were guarding something in that building.
The Santiago Guard were defending that building, the greatest troops of all of Spartan were defending this building! They could kill a man in Silksteel with a Shredder pistol -as had been so aptly demonstrated. This was either a sign of desperation, or madness. That Santiago was willing to commit her best to the last man.
We must have been half crazed by the death and fire around us -so must they. But we could not stop. How could we?


Life is a tragedy for those who feel and a comedy for those who think.
True, but then what was I? A thinker? A tragic? No! A comedian! A composer of tragedies, a send up of morality, in fact the essence of sanity. In fact, what am I now? Am I spent?
I have created many things. There is a method, an ideology and a rationality-No! An irrationality , all of which I have crafted with the lives of my lessors. I have destroyed many things. Methods, rationality and custom. Why do you value creation over destruction? Existence over non-existence? That is the way of the animal. But I am called the animal! I am the beast of humanity, it's bane and devourer-Who, me?!
On which will posterity vindicate me? How will I be saved? We great leaders must be saved for history. History will provide both the judgement and the punishment of my deeds. Forever and ever will my actions be remembered. The Great Tyrant? The Great General? I care little. My deeds have impacted upon the psyche of mankind. My ideas, my body will be the dust of Utopia. I shall be built upon, but I will have led the way!
Providence has dictated that the war will end this way. Yet I walk the way of the great - into History!
Soon my light will have gone. But not before my actions are entombed. That is the way of destiny.

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing

[Evil Knevil]

This part isn't very action orientated, I pretty much wanted to explore the story in a different angle than I had originally written it. It's a lot deeper. As usual, please comment on it.. too slow.. to fast etc...

Okay. I hope I don't bore you too much ..

Fantastic images flowed into the room. The faces around the conference table danced with a seemingly orgiastic motion, their goggles making them look like relics from a flying circus. The Spartan High Command was in session, 12 men and women that decided the fate of a nation. They were not talking, in the strictest sense of the word, they were communicating inside the simulator though. In the simulator, there was everything! A 3-D map of Sparta Command, an inventory of forces; the Commanders could even zoom down to the level of a soldier, or at least one of the soldiers carrying a mini-cam…and wasn’t dead. Everything, every single aspect of battle could be monitored and changed from inside the simulation projected onto their retinas. The commanders didn’t even need to be together, but of course, in a city under siege, there was nowhere else to go.
“ Perhaps if we e-bomb the power grids ”
“ Using what?”
“ If we abandon the base, we can still fight it out in the wilderness"
" No, we must defend our industrial centre”

Define futility: 12 people playing computer games in a dying city and thinking its going to save them. In fact orange flashes (from the butchery outside) could be seen on their faces, much more immediate, and so much more real than the minutia dealing of the Generals.
There was only one man in that room who could save everything, he was guarding the entrance to the chamber. He was Major Voltair, and he was going to kill Santiago. Voltair was a member of the fanatical Santiago Guard, a veteran of 6 wars, and had been critical in organising special operations, including the seizure of the Foucault Aerodrome and the subsequent destruction of 8 University Planet-Buster’s. However the only manoeuvres he had seen in the past year, had been retreat, demolition and murder. It was when they had to abandon Eagles Nest that something had snapped.
The Spartan garrison was evacuated but not before destroying all of the life support, razing all of the crops and demolishing the power grid –so that there was no chance of the base every becoming operational again. A city of 12,000 people, dejected and starving after a 2 month siege, was simply left to die: from narcosis, from mindworm attacks, or if they were lucky, Peacekeeper lasers. Major Voltair was sitting in a window seat of his mag-lev train, when he had seen a woman –clutching a baby to her bosom. She wasn’t panicking or dying; she just looked at the train and briefly, very briefly she made eye contact with Voltair. The despair could have frozen time itself: the hope and expression, the hardships, the misery of thousands of people, all simply annihilated because of one Leader. Because of a single madness. The look was like a psy-beam, a concentration of mental energy that knifed through Voltair’s heart.
The horror of the individual: Santiago was one mind, but they all followed her dementia. Look where it had led! 2 million people had perished; a further 200,000 were trapped in this city. Still Santiago decreed that Sparta belonged to her, an idea in the mind of God. Still people fought and died for an ideal.

Is there a time to stop? When the ideal destroys the beholder? When the ideal devours its children?

The faith was broken in Voltair. It had been broken since that fateful day, his ideals and principles- no matter how despicable they could be considered- had been shattered. He had suffered months of turmoil, angst, soul mashing horror and indecision. He had hoped to be killed, to die defending Sparta. A blessed relief, a guiltless death! He couldn’t die, he always failed: slowly he became an automaton, consumed and emotionless. He barely blinked when his wife was imprisoned, God knows what for.
Now he cornered, the rats had left the ship, the world sunk further with every scream and every flaming building. Now he could no longer serve Sparta usefully, he was simply an attaché to Santiago, now he would murder her. All principles gone, all hope lost -except for the future: but the future would still despise him anyway. A guilty death and a filthy betrayal meant nothing in the City of the Damned.
The unprincipled man checked his watch and walked out of the futile meeting. He pounded the snaking passages of the complex, left, right, left again. Down the utilitarian metal corridors and into a small low ceilinged room. He typed the code on the safe and took out Santiago’s treatments, medicine for backache, headache, gout and depression. Voltair opened the packet of white powder, labelled 2/3/43 –her next dosage, and yanked his hollow tooth out of its socket.
The leaders of the Santiago Guard had been reluctant to give their charges cyanide tablets. Eventually (when the University entered the war) it was recognised that a cowardly suicide was better than letting a tortured prisoner of war confess important secrets.
Voltair broke the tooth between two fingers and mixed the light brown powder with the white grains, the colour didn’t change. Then he sealed the bag up again; with a long pause he put it back into the suitcase and locked it in the safe.

Murder! Murder! Murder! With that cry his conscience died.

They would find out, eventually. But Santiago would be dead soon, and the future would not care.


Is this a dagger I see before me,
The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee.
I have thee not, and yet I see thee still.
Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible
To feeling as to sight? or art thou but
A dagger of the mind, a false creation,
Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?

Santiago lay back in her chair, quickly found a vein and injected the heroin like an expert. She would have about 10 minutes of delicious, lucid, calm before she lost track of her thoughts. Reclining back in her chair, she put her goggles on. She was going plan and draw the defence of Sparta Command, she could easily do so. Although an observer would have though she was mad, reclining in a chair, absorbed with her glasses, with a needle in her arm: giggling. The images, inputs and records of the entire battlefront could easily be handled by one, intelligent addict. This modern technology completely negated the need for a High Command! Wonderful!
Heroin came along with morphine(from the poppy plant) in the Unity Gardens. Illegal in every faction, Santiago was supplied with it by Morgan Traders. Heroin was what held together a thread of sanity in her personality. It also helped her gout.
Santiago giggled. She had it! A counteroffensive, to save her city!

Suddenly she seized up.

[Evil Knevil]

The smell of Deirdre’s garden; lush, sweet and crisp. The essence of Deirdre’s garden; freedom, wisdom and transcendence. The beautiful oak trees reaching up, touching in natural symmetry, the fungus coated grass, the red and green of love. What was so stunning about Lady Skye’s garden was that the trees and plants were not tended to, they grew in an ordered fashion naturally. The garden was the symbiosis, the synthesis of Earth and Chiron, man and nature: a unique glimpse at a harmony that humans could not create, or manufacture, or harvest. Deirdre often spent days in the garden, retiring from the world and from Government. Deirdre would wander around the low plants, drinking from the streams purified by Chiron’s own plants, eating apples and figs, sometimes writing poetry; she wrote with the most impassioned, absorbing energy. Some days she would disappear with a lover amongst the razorbeak tended oak trees, and they would not return until dark.
She was truly a transcendial leader, a child of freedom. She was healthier than she had ever been, fat turning into muscle under her smooth white skin. Her blue eyes were flecked with a mystical power, a brilliant blue depth that mesmerised crowds and hardened politicians alike. If one could talk about caverns unmeasurable to man, just look at the depth in her eyes. She had love, so much pure love. I loved her.
Her government was visionary, a system of environmental representation, and a system of almost pure democracy. Every law was voted by referendum, the Gaian government didn’t even have a leader. Except for Deirdre and she was simply the Supreme Justice of the Environmental Court. Lady Skye did have the vast majority of the population behind her. Effectively meaning that she had the powers of a President, but her political position was much more precarious. The Gaian people were pacifist by nature; unfortunately, they certainly didn’t want this war. But the Brax principles for peace needed to be signed. The war would be over soon and we,to put it bluntly, needed to divide the booty. Naturally my party wanted the typical Alliance State, establish a democratic government, and give the scum Spartans a few cities to perform their twisting hunting sports in. Frankly, my personal view is that we should castrate the ****ers, and leave them to become opera singers, or die. This was also pretty much the University view. They had suffered the most in this war, and despite all my efforts, refused to follow UN charter regulations, when it came to atrocities. Spartan POW’s were shot, tortured and probed on a daily basis. I think MorganS&M are selling the videos, but that might just be another one of those rumours you hear all the time. Sometimes you hear that sort of thing in the barracks, Spartans try and kill their young (with they do, the cannibals); the Hive have developed an ICBM that can hit UN HQ. What’s even more absurd is the common soldiers belief that Santiago has one last weapon up her sleeve, she’s been keeping this secret for about 6 months, if they’ll be believed.
I took Zakarov by his hand and helped him into a wicker chair. The three of us were situated in a clearing, which was foreshadowed by a red and green dappled rock face. There were rainbows at the top, and everywhere was greenery, trees, grasses and scrubs. If Deirdre wasn’t imposing enough by herself, the grand, unique scenery was certainly enough to silence you.
Miss Skye kissed Zakarov on the forehead, before turning and sitting down across from the both of us. The Professor was still weak after his operation and his prosthetics were only working aperiodically. She started; flashing her mesmerasmic eyes and said
“We have reviewed the proposals, and found them…. lacking”. She allowed a brief eye contact.
“ My lady, these proposals were approved by your UN delegation at the last summit”. I lied.
“Obviously they were wrong, and anyway, the situation has changed over the past few months, we want a recompense for our efforts”.
Zakarov managed to stutter out “We… we…need to ke..kee…keep to our pro.. pro.. prom”
Deirdre coolly interrupted: “Promises?”.
“Indeed Lady, Skye”….
“Please, its Deirdre, Lal”. She curled her mouth, not unattractively. She looked really cute like that, but the half-smile disappeared again, almost instantly. I heard the sound of a Skylark in the uncomfortable pause. I started again.
“ The UN delegations from our three factions have drawn up this plan, and in my opinion, this should be considered before we decide to overthrow the well thought out…”
“Bluntly, Pravin, we think that the war crimes penalties are far too lenient. I mean, the penalty for crimes against humanity is ludicrous…”
I glanced across at Zakarov; he was nodding in agreement.
“ But this has been decided under the auspices of the UN Charter. Every nation, including the Spartans signed that treaty. We must treat them as we have declared we will”.
“Commissioner! As you might remember, the Spartan’s withdrew from the Charter. They take heed to no international law.”.
“But we have to M’lady.” I insisted. “The Gaian’s are still members of the UN”.
Her serenity was still not undone. She was as detached as ever, only her smiles, and few flashes from her eyes indicated the emotional depth of this lady.
There was something of Pris in her. Something that made me ache. Deirdre was a beautiful woman, all the way down to her core. There was no buried malice or emotional neurosi. She appealed to the Pris side of me, the balanced side. She was the serene goddess herself, she appealed to balance, harmony and love, not animal lust. A truly transcendial grip. Sure there were more ‘attractive’ women, more eager to please, more energetic, more full of hustle and lust. But such competitive and lustful behaviour belied great insecurity. Freud compared it to a child who deeply needed affection, crushing its teddy bear in a cuddle. Basically meaning that a person directs his energy into the search to be loved. But such energy tends to be debasing, leading to lust and an appeal to a male’s less evolved side. Cat-like and nymphomaniac women were proof, an outgoing façade hiding a lonely soul. Deirdre didn’t beg to be loved. She simply loved, a force as strong as any will or instinct, and expected nothing in return. A strong woman, for all that.
I love her, I really do.
“The execution of 5,000 of the Officer Corp, including all of the Santiago Guard, will provide a message to the remaining Spartans, and to every other faction.”.
“yessss….but wh..wh…WHAT sort of message?” Zakarov tried to sneer. He failed.
“ It’s simple Zak, that we will not be taken as weaklings, our retribution is bloody, and will we NOT tolerate crimes against humanity”.
“Crimes that you, yourself, will commit by murdering Spartan officers”. I snapped.
“ There is no time for talking the moral high ground, Lal”. She curled her mouth again. “What is needed to crush the last remnants of Spartan authority, is rapid decisive action”.
“ The war will be over within 72 hours. Sparta Command has been surrounded, and Santiago’s forces have retreated into an area around the command centres and a few military installations. We are within 6 miles of the tyrant herself!”. Her entire figure seemed animated with this. I doubt she was full of passion, maybe full of conviction though.
“Lady Skye, it is true that the war will be concluded within 72 hours; probably sooner. So we must agree on armistice terms now! We have no time for prevarication over the murder of Spartan citizens”. I stepped up the tempo.
Surprisingly she relaxed again, and in her most detached voice complained:
“Commissioner Lal, I hope you realise that it is these Officers who manned the punishment spheres, hunted University children and of course, pillaged our cities.” She emphasised the verbs slightly, letting her natural accent show her real feelings.
“ I….am…willing..ing… to agr….agr..agree to the execution of th..th..the Santiago Guard.” Zakarov blurted out ‘Santiago Guard” as one word, hoping that his aphasic brain wouldn’t notice it, and stutter it.
“ Agreed Zakarov, I hope you’ll be willing to review the rest of our proposals. “ She smiled, obviously directed at me.
“ Are the Gaian’s so afraid of Spartan revanchism that they wish to shatter them forever?” This was an obvious taunt -I attempted to take Deirdre off of her high horse.
“ Our scheme has sound military and economic foundation, direct government over the Spartans will mean a much more efficient…..”
“Tyranny?..”

“Deirdre, the Provost and myself are both in agreement about the treatment of captured Spartan cities and soldiers.” This was my turn to better her little scheming.
“ However, considering the circumstances of the war, I am willing to consider the execution of the Spartan High Command, along with immediate trials for the remaining Officers and Guard leaders”.

“Since I have so little time, that will be acceptable until I talk to my aides this evening. Hopefully we will have a full treaty and armistice drawn up by tomorrow morning. I’ll be in touch.”
She got up to leave. Zakarov wheeled off, obviously desperate to empty his artificial bladder…which probably wasn’t even wired in properly. Then she turned around, the cliffs against her back, the grass beneath her feet.
“ Lal, I need to have a quiet word, I’m concerned about Chairman Yang”.
I turned off my wrist computer.
Its such a pity about Deirdre Skye, so full of hope and harmony, but as cynical as any politician when it came to the great hustle. She suffered from the Bismarck problem, two different sets of morals, one for politics, another for her personal life. Didn’t realise how contradictory that was? She could hardly be the revolutionary leader with an animal’s cunning. But to be any leader she needed the cunning. Politics ruins us.
I ****ed her hard, trying to blank out these thoughts in an orgy of flesh and ***.

[Evil Knevil]

Santiago giggled. She had it! A counteroffensive, to save her city!

Suddenly she seized up.
She let out a moan as she slumped in her chair. She felt a spreading dampness in her pants. The heroin must have been stronger than she thought. She didn’t expect an orgasm that early into a hit. Corazon was quite disappointed, an early orgasm probably meant that the climax of the hit would be less intense. She might not even get another. It depended on the length of the ride.
Santiago made a note to have a word with Major Voltair. The man obviously wasn’t as good as she thought. Perhaps I spell in the camps would straighten him out…? Santiago chuckled with her deep accented voice, thinking about the Major’s prospect as she settled in her chair again. Her broody features were graced with a grin, but it wasn’t a very suitable one. Her features were relaxed: behind the goggles she had the common addict’s glassy sheath, encapsulating; hiding her beautiful intensity.
The computer beeped: on her goggles a report flashed in, overlaying her conceptual battle plans. This was much to Corazon’s irritation. She was admiring the scenery! The lovely plains, the little hillock protecting the fusion power plant, the burning spires (Such were her manifest fantasies, world power, or ruin!). the report was the usual stuff, approval for the supply of cyanide tablets to the remaining loyal forces. Santiago slurred her approval. World power or ruin!! She had dreamed of these times, the march of power, her willpower: power over the lives of millions. The loyalty of her minions, death for her ideal.
Santiago had been reading Nietszche recently, his later works. The times where he talks about the true ‘free spirit’ or ubermensch. A man who has power over men, a man who has recognition of his ability, his will to power. Fair enough that Nietszche was a supreme, congenital misogynist, but Santiago fitted the other qualifications to be a free spirit. At least in her opinion, she was empowered, she was not constrained by morality or religion, and she was set to forge the future of mankind. Santiago hoped, as Nietszche did, that her actions would not be measured by their goodness, but by their greatness. Free spirits were masters of their own destiny, making life’s choices, making her own perception of the world. Had she not chosen the path that she went down- world power or ruin?

The most important commandment for the ubermensch, the true future of mankind, was that they had to choose the manner of their own death.

SPARTA COMMAND, LEE HOUSING COMPLEX

We had been under siege for about 5 hours. University soldiers had managed to surround the building, cutting off the power. Initially they had send commando teams in to try and dislodge our squad, but we were much better than that. The Santiago Guard was more than equal to any specialist force on this planet. Then they started to shell our position; cracking open sections of our 5-storey building, forcing both sides to wear face masks. The majority of our forces retreated to the basement and first floors, hoping to hide amongst the life support, and living quarters. We set up our sniper deep in the life support complex, so he would have first shot of those entering the pumping chambers. We abandoned the remaining 3 floors after destroying any valuable equipment, and setting up traps to foil anything that attacked from above.
Luckily, I suppose, the weather was terrible and the locusts were in the air, meaning that there was less airpower concentrated within the city. The city was engulfed in a fog, mostly of smoke particulates from badly burned buildings. There were several bright fires nearby, showing where the offence had been concentrated. Many old building had run on pure oxygen, and the rainbow color of every fire seemed to testify to this, many metals, magnesiums, iron, aluminium, they all burned different colors in pure oxygen. The damn University was testing out gatling laser-guns on our buildings. The civilians in this sector had been evacuated … they were forming another militia back at HQ. So all around, in these buildings constructed at the first landing…over 300 years ago! There was desolation; there was destruction, and heart destroying violence.
Presently, the University sent about 400 conventional soldiers in to the building, they quickly overpowered our small groups around the entrance’s.. They grenaded every room, killing quiet a few of our men, good men that died for Sparta.
But I personally killed 20 of them when they burst into the motor station in the basement, I got one of them right in the eye with a shredder dart, nasty –you could see his medulla oblongata all over the wall. The rest of my group (10 of us) nailed a total of 80. Dumb kids that couldn’t aim straight!
When they forced us to retreat into the pumping station, I had the explosives wired, my team was ready. At the same time I pressed the ignition button on the TNT, I bit my cyanide capsule.
The ****ing tablet didn’t work! It tasted like almond paste! Lousy almond paste! All my men looked round at me, nothing happened! Eventually the explosions started. Screams all around.
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