Endtown by Aaron Neathery for February 12, 2014

Like bees or wasps in a defensive frenzy, with Amesworth beamers!

Well that escalated quickly.

Ah, shoot.

It sort of looked like they were fighting each other for a second, but maybe they were just set to destroy everything. It would be interesting if one drone survived, and started making snow angels. I move that any drones surviving make snow angels until further orders. Do we have a second? Great! All in favor say aye.

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Target not acquired. Commenced firing.

It looks like this community wasn’t underground like Endtown.

I guess they didn’t care about recovering the bodies of the Topsiders…

So another ghost town bites the dust.

There – all tidy and clean now..

Well Albion is gone. Who’s next? Hillside? Endtown? Lyonside?

hmmm i wonder if they do this for mutation as well

so I guess the topsiders aren’t trying to salvage anything…

they are acting different now

topsiders been killed before and this is the first drone strike

Ruh roe!

Panel Three does make it look like some of the Drones are getting caught in the crossfire…

“Its a new world in the morning…” indeed!!!

Can’t help thinking the difference in the TS’er response this time is because they were just mopping up after an operation in this colony, whereas the other deaths were one-off encounters with mutants (or other non-TS’ers.)

In reference to panel 3: Think of a hornet swarm, or maybe killer bees.

Wow… They’re really leveling the place…Which is a downright shame, because they had some great deals at that trading post.

their legs look like mutts legs. Also they have stopped smiling.

I imagine these drone are really tough just from their size and design.Right now listening to Firesign Theater Radio.(Waiting for the Electrician or Some one Like him. 1968)Abraham Lincoln did not die in vain. He died in Washington DC……..

" I never could understand why human life, so reduced in such scenarios, is still wasted as if there are still 7 billion around instead of maybe a million or less with numbers dropping fast.".

I don’t think the world is quite that ravaged. IIRC, just parts of the planet were wiped out, Sort of like if USA, Europe and Russia wiped each other out, there would still be parts of the world left. Perhaps something analogous to huge swaths of Africa, villages and cities near the Gobi Desert, and some areas in South America.Lucrainians are out there somewhere, and Marx hinted there might be others out there, but these TopSiders were just trying to secure metropolitan Hillside and its surroundings. Respectfully,JusSayin

I wonder if the Topsider escalation is due to leadership having a feeling that time is running out. We’ve seen that living underground for six years has done to the Endtowners, what has six years of living inside one’s own portable prison cell done to the Topsiders? Are Jim and Sarah just lone malcontents or are they the tip of an iceberg of young Topsiders who are sick of living in ziploc bags and are ready to do whatever it takes to get out. We know that suicide was not uncommon even in Flask’s Topsider days. Maybe there is a groundswell of anger and frustration that is getting so powerful that even the leadership’s totalitarian tactics are less than effective. If this is the case, the leadership may feel that they have to do whatever they can to eliminate mutants before they run out of followers. That may be the reason for the satellites and could be behind the push to expend material to build a fleet of drones. Who knows what they might try next?

I’ll repeat my WAG about topsider groups and sub-sets being compartmentalized and isolated from each other. Likely in order to prevent any dissent from spreading as well as a practical security matter. Flask’s plot and the topsider counter plot is the best example, but there have been other hints that the rank and file of the topsiders have no Big Picture notion of their own situation. I’d further WAG that APEX central or whatever has a fair notion of what may be happening, and is only parceling out need-to-know or need-to-act resources. The over-reaction with the drones versus the previous almost tit-for-tat level of action before may be due to the mutants threatening a higher value new/different topside resource? Though I can’t rule out a more desperate change of policy.