Battle of Silver Hill

Utopia Project – Anatolia
Short Story
‘Battle of Silver Hill’



Silver Hill, a prominent name within the Anatolian history as being the first full AI led military victory. Silver Hill in fact was a huge wasteland of scrap metal and a junkyard. The old world, just before the split, had placed huge quantities of decommissioned and old military vehicles to rot in the junkyard. As well as vehicles, there were huge quantities of toxic and radioactive materials dumped all over the hill, as it was speculated that the old government for that region had lent this land out to local factories as a dumping site. The problems had begun when the Senate decreed that the junkyard could be salvaged to help with the growing population of AI and their need of steel and iron. So after the charters and bills were set up, a salvage operation began to eat away at Silver Hill, starting with the stockpiles of military vehicles. Silver Hill was geographically not a hill; it was the immense amount of junk that formed a massive hill that earned it its name. So the operation, led only by AI resource collectors, went on salvaging the hill.

Soon enough a contingent of bandits moved in, too quickly for security forces to counter them. Initially only warning shots were fired at the collectors, damaging several AI operators. The bandits, later identified as a scouting party of a rival resource operation, set up a small camp within their side of the hill. After much debate, it was decided that perhaps the hill could be salvaged by both sides and could work if they remained in their side of the junkyard. For a week the scouts did not fire on the collectors, who only worked under the protection of security bots within their side of the hill. This all changed when a better equipped and numerous regiment of enemy troops entered the junkyard, firing and destroying a collector robot along with damaging 3 others. After this being recognized as a clear act of hostility and invasion, the Senate asked that the AI military be mobilized into defend the area. Whilst diplomatic actions were being taken with the rival state, a regiment of AI Regulars moved into the area and began to entrench themselves. They were lightly armed and used lower grade weapons compared to their enemies but had the advantage of never sleeping, tiring or weakening. Because they were not sentient, they also showed no emotions and were actually directed by a sentient supercomputer called the Praetorian. The Praetorian was also a Senator on behalf of the AI Defense and Security Forces; it had immense computing capabilities and was a brilliant tactician, almost to the envy of human generals serving along side it.

Whilst all diplomatic options were being pursued, an unofficial peace was declared by both sides on Silver Hill. As the peace grew more fragile, with tensions rising, both sides began to set up makeshift bunkers and barricades. Soon enough negotiations failed and the Senate ordered a heavier and better equipment regiment to deploy into the junkyard, with artillery and special weapons being brought in shortly after. As Silver Hill had no occupants, the Senate allowed the use of tactical long range support as well as the controlled deployment of bio chemical weapons. Soon enough both sides of Silver Hill had entrenched and fortified themselves, knowing full well that combat was only hours away. The final night of peace fell upon Silver Hill, as the morning would ensure the term ‘peace’ was never heard in the region for a while to come.

At dawn the Senate gave full jurisdiction to the Praetorian of the operation and passed the bills authorizing it for all military capabilities. The bills had been passed during the night, but the announcement was given at the same time of the Praetorian gaining full control of the military in the area. Almost within the very minute the information had been received, the Praetorian ordered the immediate movement of all regiments into the enemy zone. The sleepless robots, always alert and active, reacted to the order within seconds of it being issued. Almost under 3 minutes the entire army was active and marching towards the enemy, who had fortified the very top of Silver Hill. The Praetorian, wielding godly power over its army, was capable of managing every individual unit and had unimaginable precision with tactics and movement. It was issuing orders with such accuracy that every single step each individual unit took was coordinated into the overall plan for the regiment. With unrivaled professionalism the robots made their way towards the bunkers, climbing through a mountain of junk and scrap metal. On the front of the lines a small scouting party was moving silently up to the base of the bunkers, already tracking the inhabitants inside them. The Praetorian immediately assigned a sub system to override and control the leader of the scouting party, allowing the supercomputer to control the unit on a more ‘personal’ level. The scouting leader, also known as S1 within the operation, reached the first bunker and readied itself for an assault. The other scouts moved under the other 3 bunkers, pairing up and readying to assault. S1 waited, within it the Praetorian stirred.

As the main body of the army moved into the line of sight of the bunkers, the enemy army was taken almost by total surprise. Their strategies did not cover counteracting a fully mobilized army, especially one that had given no warning of building momentum. Caught completely off guard, the bunkers opened fire out of panic and within them the officers scrambled to contact their HQ, desperately trying to get some help or some type of direction. Amongst the chaos and confusion the scouts attacked, climbing up and into the bunkers to catch the gunners in close combat – exactly what the scouts had aimed for. S1 had just climbed into the bunker to find a gunner moving backwards trying to produce his sidearm. The amount of information S1’s sensors picked up was amazing as it had, within a fraction of a second, picked up 4 hostile human targets, one of which was prioritized as a immediate threat. S1 looked upon the retreating gunner and simply followed protocols – warn target, if target does not comply then disarm target, if target resists then eliminate threat. Judging the situation S1 realized it had to skip the first protocol but could follow through with the second and so it moved quickly to disarm the human. In a quick and fluid action it ducked below the human’s line of fire and grabbed his weapon arm, following through with a strike to the torso. S1’s sensors indicated 2 broken ribs and minimal internal bleeding had occurred as the human fell back, disarmed and wounded. S1 looked up to see the other 3 humans trying to find weapons or any means of defending themselves. S1 now issued the warning “Get down on the floor and disarm yourselves from all military issued equipment to indicate you are now a non-combatant.” And surprisingly all 3 humans, looking at each other first, complied and placed themselves on the ground face down. S1, or the Praetorian, reported in that bunker 3 had been disarmed and cleared. Outside the entire army moved to within meters of the bunker lines.

Reports from soldiers came in that the bunkers had been suppressed, the AI had taken a moderate amount of casualties for an ambush but it had been an overall victory. The Praetorian issued orders to reverse the bunker lines so that the defenses faced the hostile territory of the hill, instantly the robots placed their weapons down and begun working away at fortifying the hill. The Praetorian was readying to press on and take the rest of Silver Hill when the Senate ordered the halt of the army. Apparently the enemy had revived negotiations after the defeat and the Senate wanted to resolve this without more bloodshed. So as the robots dug in, the diplomats waged their own battle of securing peace for Silver Hill.

As peace talks were underway, disguised as regular resource collectors several long range missile launcher vehicles moved into the area, the enemy was preparing a strike against Silver Hill. The diplomats had already realized there was something wrong, the rival diplomats seemed to talk too much without any progress yet they seemed to repeatedly bring up how desperate for peace they were. Soon enough the diplomats had fully realized that there was no intention for peace, but it was too late as the salvos began against Silver Hill.
The enemy had crept in a sizeable force, however they were poorly equipped and were general conscripts, yet after the salvos it was expected they could take the hill without much resistance. So the missiles coursed through the air, carrying both explosive and EMP payloads, and struck down against the entire hill top. The salvoes continued, one after another, until the entire hill became nothing but smoldering craters, in fact the hill had almost been blown to half its height from the attack.

Not a single robot survived the attack, the Praetorian felt an emotion it had seldom felt – rage. Quickly its emotion sub systems processed this ‘feeling’ into a tactical response, into the form of a ruthless revenge using tactical bio chemical weapons. While the enemy marched victoriously into the hill once more, many kilometers away artillery was loaded with chemical shells. These weren’t conventional biological or chemical agents, their name perhaps only retained as they mimicked the effects of such weapons, as these shells contained NANO bots that performed effects similar to nerve gas but could also be programmed to mimic something more horrible like mustard gas or tamer like tear gas. The operators, all AI, were instructed to fire a single salvo of incapacitating gas NT-2 which would not kill the enemy, only immobilize them. At the time the human observers had noted the Praetorian was using non lethal measures to attempt to win this conflict… however they were yet unaware that the second salvo was to be loaded with an extremely toxic gas, the NTv-4 (Nerve Toxin variant 4), as the Praetorian knew that preventing enemy casualties was not a campaign parameter hence it was fully capable and authorized to use this weapon, the Senate had just relied on the Praetorian acting ‘humanely’ during the conflict and did not expect that its counterattack would be this ruthless. And so the first salvo was fired and the hill fell into a white milky haze.

The soldiers on the hill had been paranoid about a counterattack, they did not rule out the possibility of an air strike or bombardment but they were not prepared for an all out chemical deployment. At first the regiment on the very top of the hill remains showed signs of problems, men began to fall on the ground or stumble around. Then it became clear that silently the entire sky had turned white and what was more fearsome was that the white fog was engulfing the hill as it descended upon the army. Soon a eerie calm crept across the hill as soldiers moaned and crawled around trying to shake off the chemical’s effects. Little did they realize that the second salvo had just been launched, little did they realize that within the white fog a slow moving army of robots marched with the goal of conducting nothing short of a massacre.

And so the first shell detonated in the air, sprawling its payload across the sky. Following it a hundred more shells detonated, blanketing the battlefield with a dense light green fog. With it came the silent deaths of the majority of the enemy army, men and women quickly and painlessly passing out whilst the few survivors fighting for their lives. The soldiers, the surviving ones, could not imagine what could be worse until they heard the metal clanking in the distance. It was not until the dark lumbering figures appeared within the fog that the enemy knew it had been not just defeated, but it would be utterly destroyed. The day would be remembered by the enemy as when the cold heartless machines butchered their sons and daughters. For the Senate however, it would be a reminder on how human morals and ethics did not necessarily apply to their AI brothers. For the AI this day would mark their militaristic genius and their abilities to gain excellent tactical results. And finally for the Praetorian, the day would serve as a lesson on the satisfaction gained from taking revenge.