The Atlas War (2 - An Iron Dream)
Chapter 2: An Iron Dream
Captain Paula surveyed the situation below from one of the SPAVs. She could see everything filtered through a tactical display in front of her. Vorlagian troops were highlighted in a dark red, Atlas Corp protected zones in a light blue, and Lechestan infrastructure highlighted in green.
She felt a familiar pang of adrenaline. She’d left national armies long ago, tired of fighting wars over minuscule plots for politicians and nationalistic agendas. When Atlas Corp offered something different. reinforcing a shared reality, she leapt at the chance. She preferred the world of clear agreements and functional systems over ideological conflicts.
“Troops are deployed Captain,” her second-in-command, Chen, said.
“Good. Although I can’t help wondering if we’re here to uphold a principle or protect a product.”
“Both I think, Captain,” Chen answered. “These farmers are exactly where they’ve always been. The data marks their property. Our job is to keep it that way.”
Miles away, Dr. Knoll was also watching the escalating situation from body cams worn on Vorlagian soldiers. She had been tasked with finding some scraps of historical “proof” for President Sal’s claims, although she hadn’t expected what he would do with it.
She had spent weeks in the archives, working at all hours of the day to find ancient land deeds, drafted treaties, and maps with hastily drawn lines, then summarize them into some sort of digestible narrative. Yet despite all her research, the pieces refused to fit. Their historical claims were flimsy at best, but that was enough for Sal. He wanted a convenient narrative for a populace yearning for national pride after a decade of economic stagnation.
One evening of studying, she found a hidden directory in the culture ministry’s network. She tapped into it, using the admin privileges she had been granted. The directory wasn’t historical, it had current geological data. She scrolled through terabytes of high-res seismic imaging reports, recent core samples with spectroscopy, and geological surveys. Every file had been created in the last few months.
All of this data made clear that there was a vast, untapped supply of platinum reserves directly beneath the Lechestan ground. Yet now it was all just productive agriculture. Yet this platinum was a critical component in short supply for next-generation neurological interfaces and supercapacitors necessary for Sal’s military modernization programs. All the worry about history was a smokescreen in order to seek out the mineral wealth which could break the years of stagnation.
The revelation made her sick, and she grew even sicker as she realized the role she had played in this invasion she was watching from afar. She had admired the self-sufficiency of the Lechestan people on the other side of the border. While she was a scholar, she had appreciated their willingness to carve out their own life fulfillment. Now she was concerned that these beautiful farms would be ripped apart for profit.
