#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.

We don’t need another march to war. We need voluntaryist peace, because no politician is riding in to save us, and freedom doesn’t come packaged in bombs or missiles.

Read More: https://thefreethoughtproject.com/antiwar/the-liberation-of-hell-trumps-iran-ultimatum-and-the-death-of-america-first

"There seem to be holes in the strategy."

Seems like the bodies working the asteroid belts finally had enough of making somebody else rich. Or maybe the company just missed a shipment and they're trying not to starve. 

Good news is, plenty of water to be had around here. And we're used to shitty-to-no grub anyhow, so a week on quarter rats ain't exactly life changing.

Supply always plans for this shit regardless, it’s why we got a buffer cache. It’s way fuckin less than it should be, cause brass is worried about theft and enemy raids, but it's still there, and the HQs got hydroponics going as well if the shit really hits the fan.

Course, if supply is disrupted for long enough – well, it's happened before, and shit gets real fucked, real quick. A body gets hungry enough and all the civilization leaves it in a hurry. 

This place is so fuckin barren that shit devolves a lot quicker than back home, too. No forest to scrounge in, no locals to pillage. Only people left to turn on are each other.

Bodies start dropping bodies to take their rations, or -- that other thing. Those that aren’t willing to go there start to eat bits of their psuits, furniture, boots, anything even remotely edible, and some things that aren’t. Anything to fill their bellies.

Course, sometimes it makes the bodies real eager to fight. Rumor spreads that the enemy’s sitting on a pile of supply and suddenly that private who's all doom and gloom and The Real Monster Is Man becomes fucking foaming at the mouth rambo.

Some bodies are saying brass withholds supply for just that reason, but that’s horshit. A hungry body can't fight for shit. A hungry body is weak and stupid. A hungry body doesn’t think too hard about who it’s hurting to feed itself.

‘S why Brass is scared shitless about supply getting disrupted. It’s the last thing they’d let get fucked up on purpose, speak to any CO and all they fucking talk about is supply. We're all way the fuck out there by ourselves, and if there's a mutiny, earth ain't gonna be able to send a relief force for months. That’s what the enemy was, to start, a mutiny. ‘Course, they mutinied for other reasons. Probably.

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.