Heavy Metal Part 4 - The Sprawl

Shelob rolled out into the dark and the rain, across the wet tarmac that cast specular reflections of the massive tower lights that surrounded the yard. We headed toward the lock-gates, Dex uttering a clearance-coded request to Omni that the gate be opened.

"Nice night," Parker murmured. I glanced over at him and he turned slightly to grin up at me, his dark face glowing warmly in the green glow of his nightscan monitors.

"Rain keeps the rats in," he clarified. I nodded agreement and turned back to watch the big gates sliding open on my main hud.

He was right - the rain would indeed keep the rats in, though there was likely little enough to worry about from them even without it. Increased ration drops over the city had dulled some of the freeform hostility that we usually ran into, and Intel and Recon reported that recent raids on weapons and ammo smuggling ops had reduced the sprawl rats' ability to inflict any real damage on us. I&R seemed confident that the threat level was low in the field, so any apprehension my crew had felt about drawing Patrol Route 6 was alleviated.

The enormous inner gates rumbled to a stop and Shelob slid smoothly into the space before the heavier, more armored outer gates that opened out into the sprawl. The lock was tight for Shelob; she was, after all, the biggest armored vehicle on the force. We caught a lot of ribbing from the crews of other smaller, lighter armors but they never seemed to mind Shelob's size when she rolled up, guns blazing, to help them out of a tight spot.

A red light flashed on my readout, then went solid as the inner gates closed again behind us, then an adjacent light began flashing green as the outer gates began to open. As they parted to the sides the hulking shape of the sprawl came into view on our nightvision displays.

Imagine Dresden after WWDos, or Beirut in the late 20th. Now imagine a whole new city had sprung up out of the ruins, only instead of clearing the wreckage they just scavenged it or built over it. Now: knock that city down. Repeat the process. Do it again. Repeat one more time and you've got the sprawl: the corpse of a major global city, now reduced to rubble and the husks of skyscrapers and malls and office parks. Any urban integrity this city had once held was gone; there was no business, no suburbs, no shopping. No infrastructure, no support, just a decaying pile of rubble stretching off dozens of miles in every direction.

And the inhabitants - the sprawl rats - were little more than feral scavengers. They organized into loose tribes, huddled for shelter in spaces they found or dug out of the ruins, and fought each other over territory, food, goods they dug out of the wreckage, and pretty much anything else that felt like a good reason for fighting at the moment. About the only thing they agreed on was us: they liked fighting us more than anything else. And they were surprisingly well armed: smugglers brought in a steady stream of arms and ammo, paid off in lost wealth the rats dug out from the rubble. It was not uncommon to see a naked, filthy child of ten aiming a state-of-the-art rpg at you.

So why we were even there? If it was so savage, what's the point of a Military/Police presence at all? That's a question constantly under debate in the House of Senators - the argument "for" is that the sprawl rats ARE well armed, and that if they were ever to unite or organize (as they did once before) they might present a real danger to the peace of the OutCity. Those opposed maintain that the walls that surround the sprawl are enough to keep it contained, that the MiliPolice presence could be redeployed to wall duty to strengthen its defenses, and that the threat of the sprawl dwellers could be undercut by more effect and aggressive action against the smugglers who arm them. It's a pretty standard election-year issue, hasn't changed much in the last twenty years or so. We pretty much just end up going where we're told to go, though I can say personally that I'd rather be here in my command seat than busting my dogs walking up and down that huge steel wall that stretches hundreds of miles around the ruins of the city.

The flashing green light on my display went solid as the gates stopped.

"Take us out, Perry," I said and we moved forward into the rain and the dark. I flicked a few toggles and Shelob's lights flared up, surrounding us in a cocoon of illumination that beat back the darkness for fifty yards on all sides. We moved out on what was left of roadway - not so bad here, close to the base, but which became progessively worse and worse until we'd have to switch from wheels to legs.

"You have your route, Mr. Perry - Patrol Six."