#forever war

those are the worst days. when there is nothing to see it happen, something wretched lurches out of every soldier down here. no one to remember the evil we spill.

When I spent a month with the Tunneler Corps, watching them carve away at the ice in their Excavator Suits, they pointed it out - it's all in the shape. Man-made tunnels are rounder. Natural ones tend to have angles; a lot are just thin slices of nothing in the ice, like clawmarks.

Best not to think about that one.

Another thing: the artificial tunnels tend to be straighter. It's just basic logistics that you want the most direct route between the place where the guns are boxed up and the place where they get fired. 'Course, they have to go around pitfalls, and chill vents, and the hard ice, but still - very open, not many corners. Not nearly as many as you get walking the winding corridors that the moon so graciously provided for us ahead of time.

The whole straight-no-bends thing seems like a great idea until something happens. Something like a lucky zealot gets the jump on a tunnel crew and takes their Excavator for a joyride.

I didn't even know they could move that fast.

When something like that happens, you suddenly feel real grateful for every little bend that breaks line of sight between you and the lunatic in the industrial mech ten paces behind you and closing. Doesn't matter that those things don't have any standard weapons on them when they can put a three-foot drill through your ribcage or crush any part of you they get a grip on with those metal mitts into soup.

Turns out the pressure plating makes for pretty good armour too, but then again, if it's good enough to tank a couple of tons of ice cave-in in a pinch, small arms fire is small fry. They put him down eventually, but by that point the bastard had repainted half a klick of tunnels with everyone slower than me.

An extra $4,000 could keep a lot of families afloat in a year of brutal fuel, food, and housing costs, but instead, that’s what the average household paid for the Pentagon.

Read More: https://thefreethoughtproject.com/antiwar/robin-hood-in-reverse-the-pentagon-is-stealing-from-the-working-poor-to-pay-for-war-and-enrich-contractors

New ones are 'more efficient', 'smaller thermal signature', yeah, fuckin great. Just means they come through the tube cold as fuck. Average loss of 5C, AND you can't use them to get some feeling back in your fingers.

Last one I sucked had ice chunks in it. Whatever meat flavor got separated out. Like chomping on ice chips and oxo cubes.

Bad enough we can't get anything solid in this psuits, but now its liquid and cold? Fuck.

"There seem to be holes in the strategy."

crowd angrily No!

So long as the water and brine flowed, they didn't give a damn that we lost our children and our old to frostbite! And when we closed the pipes and demanded they help us, did they listen to us? Did they treat any of us like human beings?

crowd angrily No! No!

You're goddamn right they didn't. They sent in their drop troops, their hired guns, and they forced the pipes back open again! They forced us back to work at the point of a gun and didn't care if we froze to death as long as they got their water.

crowd Shame! Shame!

Well I've heard the song of Europa! Our planet cries out to us, she begs us to defend her! Join me, siblings! Embrace the ice song! We will throw off the imperialist yoke and protect our beloved planet, and in turn she will take care of us! Embrace the ice song!

Not long ago some Trump administration flunky said that Trump's disjointed randomness was actually "five-dimensional chess". The truth is that Trump has difficulty with two-dimensional tic-tac-toe.

Trump lost the Iran war months ago and won't admit he's a loser.