Vladimir Anderson - Struggle. Retribution in the Twilight

Tarantula

The Hiwi didn't strike him as anything special. Good warriors who had found their place in the land and now clung to it. It was foolish to blame them for fighting on the same side as the Plagues, or for attacking the Maquis so mercilessly. Their place is their place. And it's pointless to deny it. Someone had to take it. And the fact that they have done it well is something to be learned from them rather than to be blamed for it.

That's why the prefect sent him here – to learn more about how to take his place. A place under the sun, not underground. It was safe to say that the miners had taken their place underground… And, strange as it may seem, Tikhomirov felt that there was more than enough room under the sun.

And it was not only the preserved buildings in which to occupy a place, but also, obviously, the production facilities that could be used to supply these places. Now, when Tikhomirov calmly walked the corridors of the Cobra base and saw on the one hand the abundance of weapons and various equipment, and on the other hand – the occasional idleness of those people who surrounded him, it seemed to him that in general, the life of people in the presence of plagues, probably not too much different from what was more than a century ago. It was the miners who got it, and those who work in the production of the plague empire. But for the rest of us, it's very different. It seems that it's not just the Kiwis, but the Maquis as well, who live differently…

The Maquis were always complaining. Whenever you asked them anything, they would start talking about how the plagues were always pressing them, how they always had to hide somewhere, constantly retreating and generally barely making ends meet. But in fact, no one touches them beyond Bakhmut. And even more than that, the plagues and hivis themselves are afraid of their possible attack and are looking out for them, so as not to miss an unexpected blow.

The miners didn't know anything about chiwi. And it turned out that the whole idea of people in the plague empire was a handful of survivors in the enterprises, who only do what they can to meet the production norm.

And it turned out that the world was much more multifaceted than that. And certainly not black and white, as one might have thought at the beginning.

Still. How many weapons the Kiwis have. Machine guns, which you don't often see around the tents, and grenade launchers, and even armored vehicles. And it all looks very fresh… Actually, the document they'd once gotten from Shinhra, where a certain "Coyote" reported that the Imperial Army was fighting so poorly, didn't seem to be some kind of fiction. And if it was embellished, it wasn't too much.

I'm also wondering how this whole thing is organized. A couple hours ago, Cobra went to see Raven, who is the leader of the group. But even that level of "in charge" doesn't mean that everyone obeys him. It's more like he's coordinating them. And that's evident from the way Cobra marveled at the subordination of everyone and everything to the prefect personally, and especially people who can subvert on command with themselves. They have two grenades per person, and that doesn't always work. But with us, everything works, and with one, and the first time.

All that said, the system the Prefect is implementing is going to be far more resilient to change than the one the Kiwis have now. The only flaw is that if you take away a top commander, you replace him with another. You might lose skills, but you don't lose the system. But at the Mountain, except for him no one like him can not be put, no matter how much you want to … And then Tikhomirov had an interesting idea. An idea how to make the unreal real only in the minds of other people. And even though even now it was of little use, but in the long run, if something happened to the Mountain, it would be possible to save the whole system....