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Assistant: Title: SAC 2045: Singularity Condition
        Author: RiptideZ RiptideZ 
        Chapter: 6/6 
        Summary: "The day we become gods; we will not know the difference." A Ghost in the Shell: SAC_2045 reimagining.Situation Update: Prologue/Ch.1, Ch.2, Ch.3, Ch.5 complete & posted. Previews of Ch.4, Ch.6 posted. Ch.7, Ch.8 in progress.
        Contents: Chapter 6: War of the Little People – SUSTAINABLE WAR (PREVIEW)
    

    


      
        
          I don't think I'll be able to get any new chapters out before the end of the year... But I feel like I've been holding out too long to show what I've been trying to work on little by little. As an early Christmas gift, here are previews of Chapter 4 and 6 before year's end. Thanks everyone for continue to read and provide feedback, it helps a great deal!
      
  

  
  
    
    “War of the Little People – SUSTAINABLE WAR (PREVIEW)” California, United States of America, 2045. . . Motoko found herself mumbling a metaphoric verse when she could stop by long-abandoned roadside ruins. “It’s wonderful not to have any noise. Too bad it can’t stay this way forever.”The streets and towers of Palm Springs glinted like gold in the afternoon’s harsh summer sun. It was a sizable desert town in central California just off the old Interstate 10 heading toward San Bernadino and megacity Los Angeles. For such renown geography, it was strange no one wandered the streets or drove along the major freeway.It was more than just excessive heat or a long summer. There were no calls of birds, no chattering of bugs nor the howling of coyotes. Not the background babble symphony of people chattering or the road noise of vehicles. Only the silence of ghosts and the whistling of the wind.Closer inspection of the buildings revealed shattered windows, and bullet holes carved into brick and concrete walls. Potholes in the asphalt roadways, while cratering with time and erosion, still showed the recent footprints of tank treads and deep puncture marks from robot walkers.The ghost town was a symptom of an insidious program creeping across deserts and foothills of the American Midwest. Once thought impossible in the last century and renewed again after a fragile peace, war returned to the lands of the former and renewed United States. The conditions of changing times chased away the larger animals and people, and soon the ecosystem seemed to vacate as well. But occasionally, a growling machine betrayed the great silence – beginning as a rattle on the horizon before reverberating off vacant buildings and become a chainsaw roar of whining hydraulics.A desert tan M1301 utility buggy with a large tarp over its truck bed dragged a plume of sand in its wake, disturbing Nature from its business of decrepit reclamation. Soon, the lone military jeep would abandon Palm Springs as well. People stopped calling Palm Springs home once sustainable warfare crossed their county borders. And since then, no one stayed. Only going and passing through. Another ghost town to join fallen Joshua Tree and Twenty-nine Palms.The purple-haired, and goggled driver of the desert buggy adjusted her left mirror, giving it a brief glance. There was nothing but cactus, dust, and dried out palm trees behind her. She didn’t need to check but the act of adjusting her mirror was a decades-trained reflex, an overt and unnecessary human gesture. Her cyberbrain synced to the external micro-cameras bolted to her jeep’s bulletproof armor providing three-dimensional awareness through the vehicle’s body everywhere she looked. And while cyberization was like a superpower provided by contemporary technology, sometimes nothing beat a reliable mirror when technology was a dual-edged blade. Able to blind, and able to kill.The driver, former Major Kusanagi Motoko of the Japanese military, kept one eye on the sideroads she took through the war-torn Palm Springs and another eye on the multi-spectrum signal scanner of her surrounding area. While her jeep didn’t carry any powerful sensors, she synced her program to her nearby convoy trucks with satellite uplink access.After a three-hour detour to sightsee and survey the edge of Palm Springs, there was little bounce to the ambient signal waves. No notable radio or laser jumps. No signs of dish radiation. It was quiet as ever. The only spikes on the user interface lay westward towards Los Angeles.Still, Motoko kept to the edges of Palm Springs for safety. Even if her sensors didn’t detect signs of life or electronic activity, it did not guarantee hidden or low-tech threats might still hide deeper in the ghost town. She took two turns and roared back onto the access road in the direction of Interstate 10. Motoko glanced once more in her rearview mirror and gave a small, wistful smirk at a shaded doorway to a building where piles of tumbleweed ballooned into a door-covering swarm like a set piece in an old zombie movie. Even as other life vacated the city, life persisted in other forms.Maybe one day the birds and bugs would return to stay. And maybe people too. Motoko offered herself a trivia question as she drove onto the Interstate 10 overpass. “What was the missing element in Palm Springs and its neighboring towns? Why abandoned and forgotten?”The trick was defining the context of “missing.” The building blocks of civilization were water, food, people, and stability. Or additionally, this era’s burdensome concept of sustainability. These elements were not missing but stolen.With Net connectivity jammed or spotty in the Coloradoan deserts of South California, the Major resorted like an average human to her own memory for answers. Locals declared Palm Springs the spear tip among once-thriving farms, townships, and native American reservations in Riverside County. Per the town name, palm trees were native to the former desert oasis and the contemporary title emerged as result of America’s last century economic boom and trap tourism. The local, life-bearing waters emerged from the greater Coachella Valley’s groundwater basin. Later construction projects expanded water access through the All-American and Coachella canals intersecting the Colorado River and water projects further north and south through San Gorgonio Pass and the Sultan Sea.But today, like the craggily surface of browned grasslands and rocky deserts around Palm Springs, most of the State Water Project’s efforts were gone as the Colorado River diverged with neglect and time. The ancient groundwater basin ran dry from over-farming, and by war-driven disruption and mismanagement. Only the canals continued to flow at reduced capacity thanks in part to the United States Army Corps of Engineers and a skeleton crew of state entities simply to keep megacities like Los Angeles and San Diego quenched with freshwater despite their recent, successful desalination programs pulled from the Pacific Ocean.The circumstance created sustainability for some but left few scraps for the rest. Still, it wasn’t necessarily the cities or California to blame. Rather a vague consequence of human ideology and vision, especially in the form of ambition and greed. Modern society itself ran on freshwater: humans and machines alike.No one man destroyed this town, and no one man destroyed this country. But the works of a few determined the fates of millions. The so-called industry of “sustainable warfare…” With the water gone, the food vanished, and the people left. Stability became a distant memory, and like water, life followed its natural course into quiet oblivion. In other scenarios, nature and wilderness should thrive in the absence of human civilization, but the absence of humans didn’t mean their effects suddenly vanished.A six-lane freeway widened before the Major and her desert buggy – three headed east, three headed west along Interstate 10. The road rumbled ungracefully even with the reliable, old pavement. Motoko left Palm Springs in the dust, but she could still see and feel the obvious prints of tank treads as she rolled over them. She noted minor disturbances of her Heads-Up Display (HUD) as a form of electronic flickering and eyed silver-metallic sparkles in the sand on the roadsides with weariness.Anti-signal, jamming chaff. The American air force dumped tens of thousands of tons of micromachine-infused radar chaff countermeasure across the Colorado Basin. Expected consequences emerged throughout the independent rump states of Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah. Designed to interfere with sophisticated communications suites and battle networks, it prevented the regional defense forces from mounting peer-level combat resistance to American “peacekeepers.” Tank columns and mechanized infantry rolled through the states uncontested from radar and laser-guided rocketry in the early 2040s. The micromachines self-destructed into organic materials but deployed with an encryption passkey for their disassembly command. And in large parts of the American Midwest, the American military conveniently forgot to turn them off.Motoko ignored her throat microphone and pinged her cyber lobby instead, enabled by a new, bulky light receptor mounted to the top of her buggy.
  
    MOTOKO:
  
  「 Batou, come in. 」
  
    BATOU:
  
  「 I-I-hear you, Major. 」
  
    MOTOKO:
  
  「 I see radar chaff on the roadside. I’m returning to you now. 」
  
    BATOU:
  
  「 C-can-can you repeat your-your last? I heard-heard cha-chaff and r-roadside. 」
  
    MOTOKO:
  
  「 Returning to you. RTC. 」
  
    BATOU:
  
  「 *Greenlight acknowledgment* 」
Despite the questionable and complicated actions of the Americans’ most recent war, their consequences were everywhere. Their leftovers saw reuse and readoption: by the military, and by others who might find solutions in desperation. The Major grew more confident of her observations of jamming chaff on the roadside, amending her mental note to unusually high concentrations of jamming chaff on the roadside.Under normal conditions, the micromachine chaff would disperse from rain and wind. High concentrations of it three or more years on implied someone was collecting it, and in this configuration implied an ambush.Motoko kept driving, keeping an eye on the rates of subtle jamming and background radiation pounding her external and internal radio equipment. She fired off two pings on her internal map through the cyber lobby. The first marked a spot a half-mile in front of her at an equidistant break between California State Route 111 and Interstate 10. Her second ping marked where to meet her team, with a ten-minute countdown.Driving up to her first marker, the Major noted the chaff signal jamming seemed to subside as she approached. Not trusting her luck, she gunned her motor and drove an extra mile past her first virtual marker. The jamming returned.No gunfire erupted from the nearby foothills, no rugged vehicles came bursting out of the desert underbrush or nearby ravine. It was quiet except for the buggy engine; Motoko brought her jeep to a halt. The axles and brakes gave a final worn-out screech as the tires spun up loose gravel along the dilapidated road.No snipers, no ambushes, but maybe not yet. Putting her vehicle into park, Motoko called up another name in her virtual contacts.
  
    MOTOKO:
  
  「 Saito. I need your eye and Hawkeye uplink. 」
  
    SAITO:
  
  「 S-s-sure thing Major, it’s not per-perfect with the jamming but go-go ahead. 」
The Major felt a part of herself dislodge from her body as alien sensations took over and a superimposed, fuzzy video from hundreds of miles above her stared down at her smudgy purple-haired head and lithe figure casting a short shadow beneath the sun’s unforgiving glow. Another feed superimposed onto Motoko’s conscience as a third eye from her team’s eyepatch sniper Saito allowed her a peek through his cybernetic eye from four miles north. Saito scanned around him looking for unusually colored pixels in the shadows of nearby hillsides or subtle, tell-tale signs of recently pulled-over vehicles.With Hawkeye satellite data and Saito’s software-enhanced vision, it didn’t take long for Motoko to spot a pair of new dust clouds erupting along the roadway behind her, about five miles back and racing out of Palm Springs.
  
    MOTOKO:
  
  「 They took the bait after all. 」
  
    SAITO:
  
  「 Yep. I-I see them. Two-two, no three unknowns. One heavy duty and two technical converts. Repeat my-myself? 」
  
    MOTOKO:
  
  「 You came in clear. Let’s RZ at my second marker. 」
  
    SAITO:
  
  「 Roger, we’ll see you there Major. Be careful. 」
  
    MOTOKO:
  
  「 Of course. 」
Despite her own order, the Major didn’t gun the buggy motor. She climbed out of the driver seat and lowered herself with little effort to the asphalt. A brief point of weightlessness reminded Motoko of her body swap a couple years back. She was a head or so shorter than her old body now, and it took an extra moment to exit her vehicle. It wasn’t a shocking change after years away from Japan, but even a full conversion cyborg like herself sometimes got spells of phantom pain. She admitted a little, she missed the extra height but there were also some occasional advantages. Of course, now was not one of them.She jogged to the back of the desert buggy and hopped up to the truck bed with some effort. Motoko first tweaked the angle of the mounted free-space optical (FSO) camera array for laser communications. However, she didn’t have time to confirm her adjustment in her cyber lobby feed. She pulled apart restraining chords as a mechanized body underneath the bed-laden tarp wriggled about in sudden anticipation. A squeaky, mouse-like voice echoed in the back of the Major’s mind.“Come on Major, let me at them!”Motoko tsked at the voice, finally freeing the canopy and pulling it along with her to the ground as her jump rocked the M1301 buggy. The canvas unfurled behind her like a cape and from afar it might appear she vanished into the oversized sheet. The canvas settled halfway to the ground, revealing nothing and no one. Instead, a fuzzy transparent outline took her place even as her true shadow remained. From afar, some might spot a sky-blue spider robot in the back of the buggy but it too became a transparent smear as it engaged Type 3302 thermoptic camouflage.“Hold on, little one. Not yet.”Motoko ignored the grumbling noises erupting from Musashi, her backseat-riding Tachikoma spider tank. She rolled the canvas tarp into a haphazard ball and tossed it into her buggy’s center console. A quick glance up confirmed the buggy’s M2 Browning machine gun was still in combat ready state.“Three more minutes and you can go to work.”“Yippee!”Gunning the motor, Motoko and her spider tank raced back toward the convoy as a red spec broke over the next hill in her rearview mirror. She disconnected herself from Saito’s Hawkeye cameras to better focus her situational awareness, noting the enemy vehicle was a technical – an up-armored, improvised combat truck and packed with a fireteam of goons. While their armaments were difficult to identify from afar, the other unseen vehicles probably had similar outfits of equipment and personnel.They matched the profile of “Raidists” as if copycat behavior among disenfranchised road bandits could form a coherent political ideology. Despite the unreliable title dubbed by sensationalist American media, increasing incidents of road banditry made travel in the American Midwest increasingly untenable. Raidists, or raiders, were desperate, lightly armed, self-deluded, and beyond foolish. But they wouldn’t participate in banditry if they were unsuccessful. And now they had Motoko’s undivided attention.It would take the raiders a little bit of time to catch up; enough that Motoko and her team would confidently link up at her second waypoint without issue and time to spare. And speaking of timing, the Interstate crested into a sideroad and from an off ramp: three large, tan colored FMTV 6x6 cargo trucks burst into view alongside Motoko’s buggy. At the wheel of the lead vehicle, the tubular eyed Batou grinned down at the Major.“It seems you’ve bitten off more than you could stomach, Major? Saito says we’re looking at three bogeys?”Motoko shook her head, glancing back at the dust cloud and pursuers behind her in the rearview. “The posse is temporary; they’ll scatter when they see your ugly face.”Batou gasped, loud enough Motoko thought she heard it over the vehicle engines. “Major, you wound me!”“You’re a big guy, your face can take it. Not sure about your heart.”Batou shook his head, sharing a glance with Ishikawa in the passenger seat. “That’s it. Next time I swap shells, I’m dolling up like the Major there.”“I’m not sure how our team would handle two Queen Kongs vying for the spotlight,” Ishikawa teased back, shaking his head.“Considering Batou enjoys being a gorilla too much to change, who you calling Kong there, Ishikawa?”In Motoko’s cyber lobby, Ishikawa offered an impressionist pictogram of gapping and closing his mouth. When it came to teasing their Major, her team knew they tread on careful ground. Especially old man Ishikawa, a veteran of Motoko’s adventures for over two decades. Why an old man like him was still working under the Major was anyone’s guess.“Whoops! Sorry, oh dear Leader!”Expanding her cyber lobby, Motoko dragged her team into the secured brain dive and addressed them as their virtual avatars populated into invisible chairs around her.
  
    MOTOKO:
  
  「 You can grovel for me later, Ishikawa. Saito, what does the Hawkeye got on our pursuers? 」
Ishikawa rolled his eyes as Saito leaned forward, relaying overhead and zoomed-in linear photos of the adversarial force chasing them.
  
    SAITO:
  
  「 We’re looking at a medium-sized raiding party, about average for California backcountry. Twenty or thirty hostiles. There’s nothing distinct in appearance for this faction. Most likely the Riverside Nomads. Considering the DSA Marines used to train out of Twenty-nine Palms, it makes sense to see military-ID weapons in their possession. So far, I’m seeing last generation M4 and SCAR rifles. Heavy weaponry accounts for American-made models of RPG, and stockpile AT4s. Each technical has a crew served M2 Browning or Mk19 automatic grenade launcher. 」
  
    ISHIKAWA:
  
  「 From your view, you see any smart weaponry or cyberwarfare suites? 」
Saito shook his head and continued.
  
    SAITO:
  
  「 The Major’s intel of the Palm Springs area still holds water; the enemy is low-tech as they get. We could try hacking their vehicles or presumably whatever squad-level C2 network they might have but I think the time spent would be a waste. 」
  
    MOTOKO:
  
  「 I agree with Saito. Their microwave radiation signature is minimal. Trying to grab a handshake with a car electronic control module and forcing an e-brake seems pointless. And there’s the radio chaff. 」
  
    ISHIKAWA:
  
  「 At this point, their only creative surprise was the roadside signal jamming. Won’t stop us of course. 」
  
    BATOU:
  
  「 Do they fit the bill for the LAPD tipoff about the large raider meetup happening in Old Town? Their force seems too small to be a threat, even to city cops. 」
  
    MOTOKO:
  
  「 Considering how stretched thin the Los Angeles police are, even a small raid party can become unmanageable. We’ll lay them out and continue onto wherever next Obsidian Actual sends us. At worst, we should be home in a day or two. 」
Saito glanced around at the team with his remaining organic eye. Batou and Ishikawa quickly looked away as if hiding something.
  
    SAITO:
  
  「 Uh. Major? 」
  
    MOTOKO:
  
  「 What’s up with these two cowards? 」
  
    SAITO:
  
  「 We picked up a stray in Joshua Tree. Merc calling himself Standard. He’s not bad material, just goofy. Claims to be a Marine Corps Scout Sniper in a past life. 」
  
    MOTOKO:
  
  「 You waited until now to tell me? 」
Saito looked away as well, mirroring his team members in various degrees of sheepish embarrassment. Motoko shook her head.
  
    BATOU:
  
  「 Bad reception…? 」
  
    MOTOKO:
  
  「 Sometimes I feel like I’m herding cats. Someone, invite him to the brain dive. 」
  Saito waved an awkward hand and looked away from the members of the cyber lobby, mouthing to someone out of view.
  
    SAITO:
  
  「 He’s joining, got to adjust his parameters since he’s got a different frequency— 」
  
    STANDARD:
  
  「 —Yo Saito, is your squad leader the hot chick in the turtleneck and leotard there? 」
Ishikawa promptly burst into a crazed fit of laughter as the team fell into an awkward pause at the newcomer. Motoko was already thinking to herself who on the team she’d dock pay from first. Or maybe all of them?
  
    BATOU:
  
  「 Hey now, Major! I see what you’re thinking. Don’t you start. First, I’ll file a HR complaint. Then I’m restricting you from beer access! 」
  For Batou’s arrogance, he yelped in surprise as his virtual avatar distorted wildly across the cyber lobby.
  
    MOTOKO:
  
  「 I’ve told you not to get too close to my defensive barrier, Batou. 」
  
    BATOU:
  
  「 Get too close? You pushed me right up to it! 」
Once more stabilized, Batou did a little jig in mock anger, though touching another person’s e-brain intrusion countermeasure suite was no laughing matter either. At least between cyberwarfare experts, it was sometimes trivial. Ignoring Batou, Motoko turned to Saito with a more serious tone.
  
    MOTOKO:
  
  「 Did you already update our new friend on the circumstances or should we restart from the top? 」
  
    SAITO:
  
  「 He’s up to date on the enemy roster. Just need to get him— 」
  
    STANDARD:
  
  「 Yo-yo, can anyone here me? Can’t we just talk normally? The Nomads are so far away! 」
  
    SAITO:
  
  「 —but still working on the frequency. 」
Motoko winced in annoyance but forced her protocols into Standard’s session of the cyber lobby. Considering this was the worst time to have technical difficulties, she would have to work fast.
  
    MOTOKO:
  
  「 Right then. New guy, can you hear me? 」
  
    STANDARD:
  
  「 Oh wait… Hold on, she’s full prosthetic? She could be anyone under there. You guys aren’t led by a senior citizen getting his rocks off, right? 」
Well, that answered a “no” by technicality, but they could hear him. Instead of fixing her direct connection to the American, she started by tweaking the handshake protocol, linking Standard to Batou and Ishikawa instead since they were on the same truck.
  
    ISHIKAWA:
  
  「 Hey, you’re maybe half right. Major, you an old lady in that college age frame of yours? 」
  
    STANDARD:
  
  「 Oh nice! I can hear y’all now! 」
  
    MOTOKO:
  
  「 Ishikawa. 」
  
    ISHIKAWA:
  
  「 Er, ah… Oh, we’ve got such a young, beautiful, and kind squad leader! We’re so happy! 」
  
    STANDARD:
  
  「 Huh? Bro-Ishikawa, what you on about? 」
  
    MOTOKO:
  
  「 Noob, you hear me? 」
The newcomer jolted, straightening his back in the carriage of the lead FMTV medium truck.
  
    STANDARD:
  
  「 Oh, shoot. Hold on, when did you hack me!? 」
On first impression, this Standard fellow wasn’t a total lost cause. Once integrated with her cyber lobby, he seemed quick to adapt and assess his situation. The noob was an American of African descent, dark skin, of lean fitness, and probably in his late twenties making him the new-youngest of Motoko’s mercenary fireteam. He wore his hair high and tight, with spiked braids and cornrows giving him a high maintenance, well-kept look. An above average-looking young American man, and average soldier for that matter. Motoko almost called him “Private.”
  
    MOTOKO:
  
  「 So, you’re the new guy. What’s your name? 」
Standard proceeded to look over the edge of the truck bed, eyeing up Motoko as she watched his vision through his hijacked cybernetic implants. Politeness and privacy were a forgotten friend on the battlefield. He would learn to live the with infringement quickly, or the team would move onto the next recruit. As always.
  
    STANDARD:
  
  「 Stan, or Standard! But you can call me Stan. Nice to meet you, Boss Lady! 」
He threw in a half-hearted mock salute for good measure and a toothy grin. Motoko had the slight impression he was more flirty than respectful. Her voice didn’t cut through the cyber lobby this time, only addressing Standard as stern text as she forcibly shutoff his stock market tracking app, social media, and his music playlist “The Heart’s Symphony.” He didn’t need them anyway.
  
    MOTOKO:
  
  「 Mission’s ongoing, Stan. Time to put away the distractions. And try not uploading every girl you see on Thumbs Up Girls! – especially your new team leader. Didn’t they teach you anything about Op-Sec in the Marines? 」
Standard gaped at the intrusion and a clean overhead HUD display. He mumbled off something inaudible but Motoko picked it up briefly, ‘I even gave her four stars, come on…” She chose to ignore that part. She did deserve five out of five though. The newbie gave a sheepish rub of his head in embarrassment.
  
    STANDARD:
  
  「 Sorry! Loose lips sink ships and all that, yeah. Promise I won’t upload it. 」
  
    MOTOKO:
  
  「 Saito. What’s your take on this guy? 」
  
    SAITO:
  
  「 Hmm? Well, his name pretty much says it all. 」
Saito offered a vague answer, giving a stern once over of Standard for any number of reasons.
  
    STANDARD:
  
  「 Oh, come on! It’s more than that. I’m a standard you use to measure greatness. I’ll show all of you! 」
Despite the refute, Standard greeted all his new team’s insults with a smirk or a grin, and a chuckle. For someone so foolish, he was either stupid or quick to making his own good time. No idea if that made him good company, or a reliable teammate. They would see, for now…
  
    MOTOKO:
  
  「 Hate to break it to you, but what you are is 面白. 」
Slow to catch up, Standard mouthed the Japanese syllables in confusion.“Oh-Moe-Sheer-Row? Wait. What’s that? What did she call me?” He looked away from Motoko to the rest of the team with slight desperation. He even spoke it aloud, yelling over the wind and the road.
  
    BATOU:
  
  「 Omoshiro. Looks like we just found the kid’s new callsign! 」
  
    ISHIKAWA:
  
  「 Hah. It means “super cool dude!” Or-or, “Super-cool, dude!” 」
The team, including Motoko, broke out in cyber lobby laughter. Even the Tachikomas joined in shrill chorus. Consensus reached; new lobby names updated.
   STANDARD   OMOSHIRO:
  「 Then why you jerks laughing? What does that mean? Come on! Don’t leave me hanging. 」
  
    BATOU:
  
  「 Try downloading a dictionary, why don’t yah? 」
   STANDARD   OMOSHIRO:
  「 You tell me that! While we got sh@tty Internet? 」
Motoko snapped her fingers in the cyber lobby forcing a silence over her team. Easily audible over the barely-there buzz of cyberspace, thunderous machine gunfire erupted from the not-so-far distance.
  
    MOTOKO:
  
  「 Alright, table that. Nomads are catching up while we giggle. I don’t know if it’s smart or dumb but they haven’t bothered with their crew-serve weapons despite being well in range. That’s small arms celebratory gunfire, or they got soap opera accuracy? 」
Saito chimed in, throwing up several zoom-in screens displaying ratty-dressed, civilian-looking adversaries in the back of the trucks firing bursts of gunfire aimless into the sky.
  
    SAITO:
  
  「 It’s small arms, maybe they don’t know how to operate the heavies. Don’t suppose they downloaded that popular, celebratory gunfire guidance app, do you? They’ve managed to not shoot each other yet. 」
  
    BATOU:
  
  「 Still baffles me a cartel financier wrote the app. Story goes sicarios kept shooting their kids at birthday parties because quote, “blanks and replicas are for babies.” 」
  
    SAITO:
  
  「 That’s just a rumor. 」
  
    BATOU:
  
  「 Well, I’d believe it. 」
  
    MOTOKO:
  
  「 Shut it. Saito, Omoshiro. Engage as best you can, Tachikoma munitions at your discretion but we want them alive. 」
Saito gestured to Standard to follow his lead as the pair nestled low to the back of the FMTV’s truck bed, chambering their M110 rifle and M4 carbine respectively for combat. From their vision, the enemy vehicles – two red and green-colored pickup trucks escorted a large six-wheeled M939 cargo truck dressed in bolt-on and welded steel plating, and side-mounted stacks of brick – haphazardly-placed ERA reactive armor tiles.“That gun truck will be of specific concern,” Standard muttered with Saito nodding in agreement.
  
    BATOU:
  
  「 And Ishikawa and I? 」
  
    MOTOKO:
  
  「 Single file, follow me. I might need you to take my M2 here in a moment. 」
  
    BATOU:
  
  「 I can do that. Actually… 」
Batou climbed from his passenger side door and waved Motoko over towards him. Complying, her buggy rolled into a steady parallel at thirty-five miles per hour with the FMTV medium truck. Something about being mostly cybernetic washed away fears of life’s dangers from long ago. Batou called out “Major, I’m coming over!” but threw himself onto Motoko’s buggy before even finishing his sentence.
  
    MOTOKO:
  
  「 Maybe a little more warning? 」
Batou offered his own humorous grin in response to Motoko’s side-eye grimace, “I like a little danger!”The M1301 rocked under the sudden change of Batou’s weight but rolled on without issue.
  
    MOTOKO:
  
  「 Ishikawa. Cover my profile with the trucks, I’ll slow to the left and have Batou engage and we’ll try to pull some fire off you. 」
  
    ISHIKAWA:
  
  「 Honestly, I forget the last time you didn’t use me as bait. 」
Motoko chuckled, shaking her head.
  
    MOTOKO:
  
  「 Sure, just let me know the next time you want to get some heavy-duty cybernetics and not roll around in the most armored position of the team. 」
  
    ISHIKAWA:
  
  「 Crazy woman. 」
  
    MOTOKO:
  
  「 And I heard that. 」
  
    ISHIKAWA:
  
  「 Good. 」
Stepping back from her cyber lobby, Motoko glanced up to Batou in his purple golf shirt and plate carrier as he leaned against her Tachikoma and fiddled with the .50 caliber machine gun.“Is that getup infused with your thermoptic?”Batou glanced down at her with a frown. “No, you want me in something less flashy? Camouflage has reduced effectiveness with micromachine infused dust in the air.”“Better something than nothing at all. That purple stands out.”The former Army Ranger hummed, “You got any chameleon coats lying around?”“3302 camo beneath the passenger seat. Should be a parka!”“I do have a thermoptic suit under my shirt though.”“And are your pants and plate carrier too?”Batou offered a so-so sideways wave of his left hand. “What’s your plan?”“That wind farm complex on the roadside. I want to drag the Nomads into there, force them into an encirclement. We need survivors since the LAPD made a request to Management..”Batou growled in annoyance, “Thanks for the reminder. I hate when they clip our wings. It’s a bit much asking us to spare some fools when the raiders are gunning to kill us and take our gear.”Motoko shrugged, “When have mercenaries ever fought pirates without rules of engagement?”“When this shithole of a world still made sense.”“It’s been a while, hasn’t it?” Motoko mumbled against the racing wind as Batou did a weird gymnast routine to pull the active camo poncho from beneath the passenger seat and remain on his machine gun mount.Despite appearing a shiny cocoon in the rear view, he responded with a quiet seriousness. “Five years of mercenary work. I suppose it would be nice to act like pirates for once.”“Get wistful later, they’re almost on us!”Saito broke the middling, anticipatory road noise and distant gunfire like a fragile spell.
  
    SAITO:
  
  「 They’re engaging! Gun truck’s running their Mark 19. 」
A thunderous flash of rock and dust crackled as thousands of pebbles pounded the wheels and armor ahead of the M1301. Batou caught sight of a small crater in the road as Ishikawa’s truck wheels bounced through it like a severe pothole. Several more thumps echoed over the buzz of ear ringing and thin trails of dust pursued the launched grenades all around Motoko’s squad.“And so, it begins!” Batou declared with slight glee, ducking as another flash of shrapnel and dust bounced off his cyborg body, slipping hot pebbles under his clothes. He didn’t respond to the coal-like shavings having turned off his pain receptors even as smoke trailed after his form in the wind of high speed combat. Motoko flicked a piece of smoky shrapnel off her jeans with a grimace when it dropped into her lap through the buggy’s open canopy.
  
    MOTOKO:
  
  「 Saito, mind taking out the gunner? 」
The sniper grunted back.
  
    SAITO:
  
  「 I would if Ishikawa would keep the truck steady. I miss Batou’s driving! 」
Ishikawa growled as Batou awed in appreciation.
  
    MOTOKO:
  
  「 Well, do what you can. Musashi, go engage! 」
“Yes!” The enthusiastic, near-invisible spider tank declared, crackling its rubber-and-titanium hooves against the buggy’s truck bed, and forced Batou to step out of its path. Rising on four legs, it cleared the buggy with a leap and thumped against the ground, cracking the asphalt surface. Ishikawa cursed as the spider tank and his truck near missed a head-on collision and swerved to dodge the Tachikoma.
  
    ISHIKAWA:
  
  「 Watch where you jump, crazy machine! 」
Other squeaky voices erupted in protest from Ishikawa’s truck bed. Even as they spoke with differing personalities, the other two Tachikomas called Max and Konno seem to speak with the same voice.“We’re not crazy. You’re crazy, Mr. Ishikawa! Don’t you know ‘following at a distance?’ And why can’t we join the fight? I’d smash that gun truck with an ATGM!”
  
    ISHIKAWA:
  
  「 Because they’re expensive! 」
Following Musashi’s rearward advance, Motoko dumped her buggy’s speed and bolted left allowing Ishikawa and the convoy trucks to surge forward. Batou hooted with laughter and pulled down against the M2 Browning trigger, spewing hot lead towards the road pirates. Musashi followed suit, spraying down bullets of 7.62mm NATO from its arm cannon.The front engine block of the lead pickup truck seem to rapidly disassemble under the opening onslaught. Bullets tore into the aluminum and steel frame, throwing up shrapnel and black smoke as a whine-and-puff-like sound pattern erupted from the engine. The truck lost a wheel and proceeded to skid off-frame into the sand and rock against the side of the road and sent the passengers flying from the truck bed into cactus and deep, dried underbrush on Motoko’s far right.“And that’s one down!” Batou announced, “They know we mean business now!”An overbearing pop-hiss noise erupted ahead of Motoko and Batou’s buggy, drawing their attention.
  
    SAITO:
  
  「 The gun truck’s…! 」
Plumes of dirt-smoke erupted from the road ahead of Ishikawa’s lead convoy truck, forcing the trio of road behemoths to slow and swerve about the roadway as death rain of forty millimeter grenades closed in on the mercenaries.“We got to end this now,” Motoko growled out, drifting the M1301 buggy against oncoming traffic and the enemy. “Batou, kill the gunners. We’ll settle for any survivors.”
  
    MOTOKO:
  
  「 Ishikawa, we’re breaking off into the windfarm park. Whatever you do, do not slow down. And Saito, deal with the heavy truck. 」
“Don’t need to tell me!” Batou yelled back as Saito hummed in agreement over the cyber laser communications.
  
    ISHIKAWA:
  
  「 Yeah, Saito! Deal with the gun truck. These amateurs are toying with us! 」
  
    SAITO:
  
  「 Working on it... Major, look out. Another truck approaching from the left. They’re trailing you instead of the convoy. 」'
User: What is the theme of this novel?
User: What is the theme of this novel?
Assistant: