Propaganda and Its Consequences

This post contains: sexual assault

The first shot is cinematically wide, obviously an anamorphic lens with a slow aperture. Everything is in focus: the ruins of fallen skyscrapers. The rubble-strewn beach. The smoking carcasses of tanks and troop carriers, and the cloudless sky above. Silent except for the wind.

The ground shakes.

A massive machine strides out of the ocean, up the beach. Two-legged, four-armed, festooned with armor and shields; a massive claymore strapped to its back. The overall impression is a polished and heavily armed sphere, its sharp angles accented by red strips. Patriotic music swells.

It is undeniably massive. Its horns scrap the top of the frame from the instant it comes into sight, and the camera tracks up to keep its head in frame as it ascends. The aperture widens, letting everything around it dissolve into a blurry haze; the camera only has eyes for it. It is the only thing that matters.

It stops in the middle of the frame, staring proudly off into the distance.

The next set of shots circle around it, staring up worshipfully. Sharp, sudden cuts; the camera drools over its angles, over the way it flattened a tank’s ruined corpse, the way the ground cracks beneath its weight. The camera fucks itself on the mech’s weapons, limned in light—it’s obvious that spotlights were used for the effect, the shadows are all wrong, but it doesn’t matter. The camera’s too far gone, too lost in its lust.

A remote clicks and the video freezes. Everyone looks around, uniformed soldiers and disheveled propagandists and the gaggle of mechanics clustered just inside the canvas tent’s flaps. They all know who has the remote; the atmosphere grows tense.

The political officer scowls around her cigar. “Won’t work. Take it again.”

“W-what?” Jennifer, the photographer, is the only one who dares to ask. She’s new; she’ll learn not to soon enough. “Why?”

“S’going the wrong direction. Right to left. Should be left to right.” She inhales and blows out a cloud of acrid smoke. “Moving forward into the future.”

“But—the light’s all wrong now! We won’t be able to shoot again until tomorrow—and yesterday you said it needed to be walking into the sun! We’ll need to find another location, it would be at the wrong angle if we just shot it from the other side …”

“Not my problem. Figure it out, yeah?”

One of the more experienced propagandists takes mercy on Jennifer. “We could flip the footage. Pangolin-7’s not that asymmetric.”

“Hmm,” the political officer grunts, and rewinds the footage, “what about its name? It’d be backwards, Jackson.”

“We can fix that in post. Do some AI magic.”

“And risk a scandal? No.”

“Well, we’ll get it done,” Jackson shrugs. “Hey, Shep, radio base? Let ’em know we’ll be another day. See if you can get another few recon flights scheduled too, just in case.”

“Sure, boss.”

“And, Jen? With me.”

Jennifer trails after Jackson as he leaves. Turning her back to the political officer is vaguely unpleasant; she feels watched. The sensation doesn’t fade, even as Jackson leads her halfway across the camp, into the maze of support vehicles that grows in the mech’s shadow. It takes a lot to keep it running.

“So,” Jackson leans against one of their bumpers and lights up a cigarette, “this is your first assignment, yeah?”

“Y-yes. Uh. Just finished training last week. Sir.”

“Nah, just call me Jackson. S’not much hierarchy in prop’, Jen. ‘cept that you’re first name only ’til you impress someone, anyway.”

“Oh. Okay, uh, Jackson.”

He sucks on his cigarette. Whisps of smoke seep out his nose, but that’s all. The man’s lungs must be almost solid. “Anyway. Seems obvious that no one’s taught you the way things are, so I’m gonna: you do not talk back to the political officer.”

“B-but. She just rejected the footage out of hand! And I don’t even know how we’ll—”

“Doesn’t matter. Look, Jen, everyone here’s in a good mood, yeah? This is a little vacation. A reward for toughing it out on the front line.” He inhales again. Flicks the cigarette’s butt to the rocky ground and grinds it under one of his heavy boots. “So the politico’s not gonna shoot you out of hand, yeah? That’d ruin the vibes.”

“She’d—but that’s—she can’t!”

“She says you’re a subversive, who’s gonna argue? Can’t have anyone undermining our brave soldiers, Jen. S’how the fucking world works.”

“… but …”

“So just stay out of her way, okay? Don’t give her another reason. And,” Jackson sighs, “for heavens’ sake, if she does decide to teach you a lesson? Don’t fight back.”

“… what do you mean by that, sir?”

Jackson sighs again, and tugs up his shirt. There’s an ugly scar on his side, a gnarl of shiny tissue standing out against his tanned skin. “Souvenir from the first time I mouthed off to a politico. Bastard took one of my kidneys, fed it to the pilots we were shadowing. Fucking things were half-feral, brains rotting from unfiltered mech feedback. He said human meat made ’em fight better.”

He smooths his shirt back down, lights another cigarette. Stares at the end of it for a long moment. “Got the best footage of my life the day after, though. Fucking things tore through a strike squad twice their number. That asshole should have been a handler instead.”

“That’s … that’s horrible!”

“I lived, didn’t I? And maybe ours doesn’t give a shit. Anyway. You got it?”

“Yeah. D-don’t fight back.”

“Good girl. And stick close to the rest of the prop’ team tonight, okay? Don’t go off on your own. Just in case.”

They spend the rest of the day mapping out how they’re going to get the new footage. It’s uneventful. Once or twice an hour the skies fill with the distant buzz of recon drones checking for enemy materiel, but the front lines are well inland and the destroyers sitting off on the horizon are a powerful deterrent: their main-cannons, city-killers fed by banks of nitrogen-cooled capacitors, almost singlehandedly won the war at sea.

So no one’s terrible worried about heading up the coast a ways, accompanied by an honor guard of grunts fresh off the front lines. They really are treating this like a vacation, Jennifer thinks; full of banter and bravado, barely sparing a thought toward what might be lurking in the ruins.

They don’t get in the way, anyway, aside from one scarred soldier with greying hair who keeps on flirting with her, overacting for the sake of comedy. “Why, prithee, fair maiden, wouldst thou sup with me on this fine day?” His fellows think it’s hilarious, especially when he does an imitation of Corporal Arensen, pretend-jowls flapping. “IIiii say, young soldier, would youuuu liiiike to get icceee creaaam witthhh meeee.”

It’s not a very good imitation, truth be told, but it’s not like they have much material to work with: almost all of the old monster’s intercepted broadcasts are classified. The party line is that he’s hiding in a bunker somewhere in the enemy’s homeland, but everyone knows he’s been dead for years. He saw the writing on the wall and took the only path he could to escape prosecution: the coward’s way out.

The enemy’s still fighting as fiercely and futilely as ever, though, even without him.

They return to camp just after dark to find that the evening meal has turned into a party; someone found a crate of liqueur and everyone’s getting drunk. Some of the grunts have guitars, and Jackson has a surprisingly good singing voice, and it’s a good time for everyone. Two glasses in, Jennifer almost forgets about the political officer. She’s nowhere to be found, anyway.

3am.

Jennifer’s head is pounding and her bladder is achingly full. Sharp pangs radiate up her stomach every time she shifts, and every noise beats against her ears like a foghorn’s rude blast. Her chest aches too—she forgot to take off her bra, didn’t get undressed at all.

She can’t remember how much she drank. Too much.

It’s too early to get up. They won’t be moving the mech up the coast for another three hours, and she desperately needs more sleep, but—well. Turning over and going back to sleep isn’t really an option.

The toilets are near, at least. She only trips once on her way there.

Jennifer sits for a while after she’s done, slumped over, smelling the sharp ureic tang wafting up from under her. The dark yellow piss that came flooding out of her for longer than she thought possible, that hurt with every noise as her stream splashed and splattered on the toilet’s metal wall and trickled down to pollute the pitifully low waterline. The stall is painfully bright, white and aseptic, easy to clean; scuttlebutt is that the toilet lights are UV-boosted, sterilizing. Dangerous to look at for too long, and half the grunts know someone who came out with a tan after a bad bout of food poisoning.

“Join the army! Our restrooms give you skin cancer!” Probably the politico would shoot her on the spot if she suggested recruiting with that slogan. Probably she’d welcome it, if it made the headache go away.

The politico is waiting for her when she stumbles out of the stall, leaning against the row of sinks. She’s missing her sharp black coat and small-brimmed hat, and the remains of her uniform are rumpled and half-undone, but it’s unmistakably her, taking a swig from a bottle. Not blocking the way out, not exactly. Not if Jennifer was willing to get within arms reach of her.

“There y’are, Jenny-jen,” she croons, “up so early, hmmm?”

“Y-yes, sir.”

“Couldn’t sleep, hmm?” She takes another swig. “Naughty-naughty, good soldiers need their sleep.”

“I—I’m sorry, sir. I was just going back to—”

“But you’re here now, Jenny, and this is a fun night, isn’t it? Why, I was just having some fun with one of my favorite friends, but, you know what?” The politico sniggers. “The poor thing got all tuckered out. Gonna be useless tomorrow, you can trust my word on that, Jenny.”

“Um. I’m sorry, sir? I just,” she moves forward, trying to edge around the politico. To get away. It doesn’t work; the woman just drops her bottle and moves into the center of the room, stance wide. For a moment Jennifer things about rushing her, shoving her way past, but—well. It wouldn’t work. Her eyes flicker downwards; there’s something wrong with the politico’s crotch. It’s swollen behind her trousers’ restraining fabric, shifting and pulsing, utterly unfamiliar. Inhuman.

“So I was thinking, Jenny-jen, what if we had some fun too? Remind you of your place. Show you what you’re for.”

“I—”, Jackson’s words drift across her mind, tangled with her own tremulous repitition: don’t fight back. “Y-yes, sir.”

The politico practically purrs. “What a good girl.”

Jennifer worried that the political officer was going to do whatever she’s going to do in the toilets, with that too-bright light and the stink of stale piss and bleach, but she leads her back to her quarters instead, one of the shipping-container rooms that represent the highest tier of luxury in a temporary camp.

It’s dark inside, and it stinks of blood and shit.

“Watch your step,” the politico murmurs as Jennifer walks inside, just before her foot collides with—what? Something warm and soft and wet, that flops to the side as she pulls her foot back—the door slams shut. Its lock slides closed.

Jennifer stands in the dark silence, breathing heavily, heartbeat pounding in her ears. Her stomach clenches from the smell—and, when the political officer flicks a dim light on, and she sees what she’s stepped in, her vomit joins the mess.

Pilots are kept separate from the rest of the military, and for good reason; they’re simply not safe for anyone except their handlers (and, sometimes, other pilots) to be around. They are only ever visible in the transitional moments between their cell and the cockpit of their mech. It’s easy to spot a pilot, though; the big interface ports at the base of their neck and the seat of their spine are dead giveaways even if you miss the smaller ports that line their arms and legs. Their eyes are weak, their breasts and cocks are shriveled, and their hair is kept closely shaved.

The two on the political officer’s floor share a less desirable feature, too: their torsos have been split open. They are a ruin of broken ribs and unspooled guts, leaking watery shit and half-digested nutrient paste onto one of her boots. She adds a puddle of bile and her half-digested dinner, but it doesn’t make the sight any prettier.

“W-what,” she coughs, “the fuck!?”

“They were going to get in the way, Jenny-jen. Couldn’t have that.” The politico laughs. “Don’t mind them! We’ll put them back together later, once it’s all done-done. Put you back together too, if we need to.”

“I—,” she tries to back away from the approaching woman, trips and falls. Something pops under her ass, releasing a flood of lukewarm ooze. Makes it easier to keep on scootching back, away from the politico, until her back hits the bed and she turns her head and finds herself staring directly into another woman’s empty eyes. The pilots’ handler, she thinks, probably.

“See? My favorite friend went all the way away, somewhere in her cute little brain, and I can’t be bothered to go in and drag her back,” the politico sings. “Not yet, not yet, so you’ll have to do, little Jenny-jen.”

The politico’s pants are torn open, revealing the thing growing inside them. A mass of insectile appendages protruding from between her cunt’s lips, twitching antenna and delicate legs and many-faceted eyes half-embedded in her thighs, linked back to the hidden inner body by pale strings, raw nerve fiber exposed to the air—and, in the center, a single thick appendage slowly forcing its way into the air, chitin-armored, proudly curved. Translucent beads dripping from its tip to fall squirming on the filthy ground below.

Jennifer starts to scream.

It doesn’t help.

The camp is entirely unprepared when the shooting starts.

Whatever toxins the politico excreted into the liqueur did their work well; the small handful of soldiers who didn’t imbibe it—or resisted it—are entirely unable to organize a response before the enemy’s forces overwhelm them. Two of them reach the camp’s uplink radio—its connection back to base, to the watchful destroyers guarding them—and find it already ruined. A sniper foils their attempt to signal for help with flares.

And after that it’s just a massacre.

The politico finally emerges into the predawn light, sweaty and stinking, brain drowned in happy-drugs: a reward for propagating her infection. She doesn’t bother locking the door; Jennifer and the handler are both well on their way to joining her in service, and her compatriots need to retrieve the pilots’ brains for their plan’s next stage.