[VII] Details from Interview 8 in Cell 3C
copyright 2025 Acacia Gallagher
ICC Detention Center, the Hague
Scheveningen, the Netherlands
HR-T1: According to multiple accounts, you were the first person shot. Why have you not mentioned this?
Cruzak: It’s embarrassing.
HR-T1: No.
Cruzak: Fucking yes, it was. We were about a hundred meters from the re-occupied temple. A contingent of monks and nuns came out to tell us to go the fuck away. They set up a barrier.
HR-T1: Nuns came to the talks?
Cruzak: Two of them. We found out there were more, later. Anyway, their group had parked a pair of armored UAZs across the dirt road that was going to become the railway. Kaspar tried to walk between the vehicles but they pointed a half-dozen of elderly, Russian rifles at him and told him to back off. So he introduced himself as head of scouting for the ITB railroad and told them they were trespassing.
HR-T1: How did the clergy react?
Cruzak: I didn’t listen closely. They talked for half an hour, probably more. It got boring. Kaspar kept a phone line open to the Shaymak chief for assistance Both of them looped in some sort of ITB lawyer. She stayed on the call, too, dispensing her advice and insisting that Kaspar say exactly the words to the trespassers that she wanted him to say.
HR-T1: So it was peaceful.
Cruzak: Yeah. I asked if I could plant some of the grass seeds I had in the suit.
HR-T1: Were you given permission?
Cruzak: I sort of started doing it and then asked, but yeah.
HR-T1: Were you the only one doing construction scout work?
Cruzak: Maybe. I was in the middle. A lot of the others behind me sat down. Up front near the UAZs, the unit chiefs and Kaspar kept everyone standing at attention.
HR-T1: Were you the only one?
Cruzak: Yeah, I think so.
HR-T1: So you did your normal work as the talks continued.
Cruzak: When the order came to lower our face masks closed, I filed an objection. Once you snap that visor shut, it puts the suit into a different mode. The AI parts think you’re ready for a fight, so the whole thing jerks you around more. It’s a pain in the ass.
HR-T1: What were your exact words?
Cruzak: I said, “Fuck, no. Let them see our faces.” The scouting chief didn’t have time to repeat the order. I knew that. He had to keep going with his negotiations. So maybe two thirds of the scouts lowered their masks. But I didn’t.
“Lower mask, Cruzak,” my unit leader ordered me. He texted it to me over the comm, too. But since I didn’t have the helmet sealed, the comm display was minimized. It didn’t really bother me.
“Come on, Zielinski.” I felt like I could talk him into making an exception. “They don’t care about us back here.”
“Close face masks. That is the order.”
“It makes us look military. It’s less friendly.” Around me, though, the other stragglers were clamping shut. I could see it.
“Lower mask.”
“It is not friendly.”
“Have you not been listening, Cruzak? They are not so happy.”
“Well, okay, but I protest. This is bullshit.” I rose from my crouch, let my grass seed dispenser slip back into my suit sleeve, and paced. I still hadn’t closed up. The view from inside the helmet screen is better than real life in some ways. It doesn’t have as much glare. You can telescope your view by thinking, too. But the colors are off. They’re muted. Contrast is higher. It’s all a bit different, and I wasn’t used to it. I wanted to get a good, real-life look at the mountain.
“Cruzak.”
“This is totally unnecessary.” I pushed my visor down. I heard the sealing mechanism make its vacuum seal. At the same time, my filter system went green. And that’s when I got shot in the head.
HR-T1: (Chuckles.)
Cruzak: See? Fucking liar. I got hit right on the front left of my face. It happened while I was walking, and my helmet did some sort of compensation thing, so I went down hard. A couple of the scouts laughed. The Nigerian woman, Zala, pointed at me and howled.
HR-T1: You were fine.
Cruzak: I didn’t feel fine. I felt like I’d been shot. Anyway, from the Shaymak chief’s point of view, it established a few things. They had more weapons than we had seen. They were willing to kill us. Maybe they could. Someone on their side had downed our drone. They had at least one sniper. However many they had, their snipers could hit us from a tenth of a kilometer. The caliber of their weapons was kind of crappy, at least to judge by my surviving. It looked like they would need multiple shots.
HR-T1: This was good for you.
Cruzak: Yeah. I’m alive. But they struck fear in me, man, and in the rest of us. All of a sudden, we were in a fight.
HR-T1: But you were an army. You had army suits.
Cruzak: No, ma’am. I told you. We had no ideas about combat. We went to put an end to any idea of a fight. They had come with the opposite approach. They set us up for their main plan. That’s when they dropped their fear bombs. They expected us to run.
HR-T1: Stop calling it a fear bomb.
Cruzak: Fear bomb.
HR-T1: It was a chemical weapon.
Cruzak: Fear bomb.
HR-T1: A gas.
Cruzak: Fear bomb.
HR-T1: Please stop.
Cruzak: Fear bomb.
HR-T1: You are being childish.
Cruzak: Fear bomb. It’s a fear bomb.
HR-T1: Fine. Please move on.
Cruzak: Then they dropped the fear bomb.
HR-T1: (Sighs.)
Cruzak: Up until then, no one had panicked.
No comments:
Post a Comment