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A forest of forklifts moved about the shipyard, their cockpits filled simply with boxes studded by blinking LEDs. Captain Pavliashvili leaned on the wall with his arms crossed, rejecting the cigarette his Marine counterpart removed from his plate carrier. “You think this is going to last?” he asked. 

“Robots in the navy?”


“Well what the fuck else?”

The Marine shrugged. “You’ve been deployed mostly to warm water, yes? The easy stations near home, [i]Sakartvelo[/i], yes? I can tell you now, the Soviet Navy and the Russian one before that never had a good reputation. Command put it to you guys being losers. If they take out th e human out of the matter then they can perhaps fix it, stop other fleets from laughing at ours. 

“What? Who are you talking to Private?”

The Marine laughed. “Someone who’s going to lose his job in a few years it looks to me. I’d be more smug if I didn’t think there’s a good chance they’ll be cutting out the Marines after they cut you out. But hey, I’m still young, I can join OMON or something. Maybe you can go to the Space Corps!”

Pavliashvili growled. The little shit was right. First it was the sailors, then the officers. But he wasn’t just going to take it from the kid. “Who’s your commanding officer?” The Marine chuckled, turning around and walking off without reply. The Captain almost chased his counterpart, but decided against it and simply boarded his vessel, closing his eyes from the flash of NLCs that authenticated his keycard.

The vessel already felt… lonely. He knew this sail wouldn’t be a long one, but for future ones, the thought of being all alone on his ship terrified the man. Six, ten months with just machines and video calls to keep him company. He did not think he could stand it. With this business the Americans got themselves into, it was a scenario that was getting all the more probable. With the French biting off Quebec, it was no secret that there were discussions of an Aleutian Soviet Socialist Republic, and of Communist States of America. 

That was propaganda of course. Pavliashvili has spoken to enough Admirals and once even the Minister of Defence that he knew there would most likely be no CSA. Far more likely was a deployment of Soviet troops around the zones, a kidnapping of all the scientists around, and a plundering of all the research facilities; the people therein would be left to fend for themselves. The luckiest might end living in Californian, Bajan, and similar such Democratic Peoples’ Republics. But for now, preparations were being made. The Soviet Union was not prepared to do any such land-grabs that the second NATO had done. However, it could lay the ground for some ambitious plays of its own. The vessels to be deployed this day were to go to the Americas and discretely deploy supplies, zone-suits, and even some infiltrators and Engineers to prepare for Soviet boots on the ground to take critical sites in the Americas with a great buffer of supplies to prevent the issues of maintaining such a force across the Pacific Ocean for a long time. 

He supposed this is why they replaced the sailors with computers first. This was a delicate matter, as delicate as the Spetsnaz working to co-opt the many workers movements into seeing the Soviet Union as synonymous with liberation of the proletariat. There was no room for human error; when it would come time to throw in conscripts with orders to shoot whoever didn’t comply, such delicacy wouldn’t be needed, hence no automation for the army.