"If you encounter the Knight Sabers, I want you to bring them in. By force if necessary."
"That a direct order, Chief?" the suit with K-11-2 painted at the collar said.
"It is."
"Then, sir, I directly refuse it. I don't mind dying, but only for a purpose." The chief turned towards the second K-11, K-11-32, but he shook his head. The third one shook her head. It went on down the line for all six of them, the four on the ready response team and the two home guards.
There was a long silence. The Chief appeared to be counting to ten. Then: "I'll have your badges for this."
K-11-2 laughed at the threat. "Now," he said amusedly, "me you might actually get at. But firing junior drivers for refusing to do something the senior and most experienced K-11 operator on the force regarded as suicidal? Try peddling that to the police union and they'll leave you spattered over the inside of every courtroom between here and Hokkaido. By your leave, sir." He turned to the other K-11s before actually receiving any reply. "Mount up."
A calculated insult to the chain of command. One he could afford, having just been posted to training and administrative leadership of the armored trooper teams. He was the highest-ranked member of the first ten armored trooper pilots the ADP had brought in still alive.
Of course, there were only two of them left, himself and K-11-8. The second batch hadn't fared as well. They'd lost one their first week, which was how the first batch had gone, and the remaining nine had all died in a single night the next week, trying to stop a pair of combat boomers, BU-12s,
The Knight Sabers had then stomped all over the two BU-12s.
And the Chief wanted them to try and bring the Knight Sabers in? Nine good men and women had died holding the line against things that didn't make the Knight Sabers break a sweat, and he had only three with him. They wouldn't even last long enough to hold the line for more ADP to arrive and complete the job, they'd just go "squish". And they'd play Amazing Grace at his funeral, on bagpipes, because that was what you did for the US-descended officers on the force. His casket, however, would be empty, because there wasn't enough of him left to bury.
Fuck the Chief. Yes, it was pressure from above, probably all the way up through the Mayor and on to Genom. But a good leader should have known better than to pass on that order.