Memoires of a tank driver

The praefectus Romelius was scanning the African desert that extended to the south of us, using his right hand to cover his eyes in an instinctive way, although the lenses of the helmet were able to darken to adapt to the light. We were there because disturbing news had arrived about infiltrations of axumites, who were carrying out sabotage actions against some armament factories in the area. Our armored cohort, the pride of the II Legio Mercurialis, had been waiting for more than 5 hours, and although the lorica had a rudimentary temperature control system the heat was cooking us, and the wait was making everyone nervous. However, no one dared to protest, thanks to the charisma of the commander. I too was getting nervous, and I was doing the umpteenth control of the systems of the aper armored vehicle in which I was, even though I knew very well that I would not have found differences with respect to the control done about half an hour earlier. We were there on the recommendation of the secret services, which had identified in that area one of the routes used by the enemies, and this time they would bring with them a nanobomb, to be exploded in Oea. I still remembered, three years before, during the war with the Persians the effect of one, the silver cloud of the nanomachines that enveloped the soldiers, leaving them dead on the ground without visible wounds despite the complete loricae, but with the organs destroyed; the idea that someone wanted to use a device like that in a city repelled me, especially during a period of peace like the present one, and without any declaration of war. While I was immersed in my thoughts I noticed, thanks to the external cameras, that the praefectus was doing something to his helmet, and from how he moved his head in jerks I imagined he was reading something. After a while I saw him jump up onto his vehicle as he ordered us to get going. Almost simultaneously on the screen of the vehicle appeared the coordinates and the marching orders.

Later I would have discovered that the satellites had noticed some heat traces, and the reconnaissance drones sent to the area had all recorded a spontaneously malfunction roughly together. If we were not already been waiting for signals like those, we would not have noticed anything, since often those old things have tantrums because of the sand and that's when they don't get damaged simply from the heat. The lucky fox that we all had on the cart began to oscillate more and more strongly, as the spirals took speed and we passed through the dunes, little more than a cloud of sand thanks to the camouflage devices. While I was driving I could not help thinking about what would happen if the enemy hacker or hackers managed to fry the electronics of our vehicles, leaving us on foot in the desert. It's true that the passive protections of the aper are enormously superior to those of simple reconnaissance drones, especially those old tins, and that surely a research team would have been sent, but the images of us like so many skeletons in our beautiful sand-colored loricae continued to buzz in my mind. According to the agents of the arcane cohort, the enemies would have moved on foot, in order to draw less attention to themselves. So it was with little surprise that when they got to the point where they should have been there was nobody. The sensors detected nothing that could be useful traces, neither human nor vehicle, only the footprints of a herd of wild camels.

While we were waiting for orders the praefectus exited to take a look in person. After examining the animal footprints for a few moments he launched a profanity in Germanic, which the translator included in the lorica referred to be related to the tendency of our adversaries to slip large objects into their anuses. Immediately afterwards he returned to the official Latin, ordering us immediately to march north, demonstrating at the same time a remarkable ability in the insult also in Latin, this time taking it with us since we did not move fast enough according to him. As we ran through the desert sands behind the camels, the drones preceded us in a fan formation. Inside the wagon I could clearly hear the comments of the other legionaries, all carefully done with the microphone off, wondering what was going on in the commander head and if he maybe had suffered a heatstroke. And in fact I shared the same perplexity; despite the fame as a brilliant tactician of the praefectus, the idea of ​​chasing animals seemed bizarre to me, to say the least, but the orders were clear and I hoped he had noticed something that had escaped us.

After about 10 minutes of travel the on-board computer told me that we had lost contact with the drones, while Iohanna, the hacker who was with us, told me that she was being attacked, and was trying to protect herself and the vehicle. After another minute the on-board computer signaled figures in front of us, and soon we saw the camels, a group of 6 specimens, which nevertheless seemed to move in a strangely ordered way to be wild animals; in fact, three of them were in front of the others, while two of them walked side by side, and seemed slower than the others and the last was following the others. As soon as they heard the sounds of the vehicles the beasts accelerated, starting to run, and the two who proceeded side by side began to lag behind the rest of the herd. Immediately we received the order to shoot on the animals and, although perplexed, we prepared to obey. However, because of the hacker attack, the automatic pointing system was out of order, so our gunner was forced to aim using the sights. The shells left immediately, centering the animals, but a badly calibrated shot, probably the one of our wagon, struck the space between the two beasts, and unleashed all hell. Rommelius immediately gave the alt, while from that point rose a silver cloud that immediately began to expand. Even before my conscious mind had registered everything, I had given the order to reverse, suddenly blocking my aper and making Iohanna take a nose-dive, before the spirals began to turn in the opposite direction, moving us backwards. I did not worry about the formation, as the cloud expanded in all directions, and enveloped the fleeing camels and something above them, while other machines probably killed the beasts hidden in the sand, and a part too big in my opinion was directed towards us.
Fortunately, my timely order had saved our lives, the same could not be said of the number 2 vehicle, which was hit by the cloud. In fact, in my agitation I had not realized that while I gave the retreat order the praefectus had done the same, and only those poor people of vehicle 2 had not had time to execute the order. Fortunately, the bomb was a smaller model than the standard one, with a radius of only 20 meters of autonomy for the nanomachines, so almost immediately we could breathe a sigh of relief, and wait for the machines to stop before going down and check the situation. In the end we discovered what had happened: those bastards of the Axumites had worn total optical protections to avoid being seen, and the same was done with the bomb, and then to transport it they decided to use camels and pretend to be a pack. In fact, who would have ever thought that someone was still riding animals? It would certainly have escaped me, fortunately not to the praefectus, who, seeing the footprints that were too regular and who "strangely" followed the suspected path of the enemy, had immediately made the connection.
Extract purged from the memoir of the optio vehiculi Georgus Immus about the operation "Fly Swatter" as the operation is covered by military secrecy.