Tag: audition

Tension!

 “Agent Madole’s hit pay dirt,” Beltran told him. “She found a hidden basement, and she needs backup to check it out. That’s us. I don’t need to tell you what that means, right, cadet?”

“Yeah, Agent. Do whatever she says, unless you’ve told me otherwise. Whatever I need to know, you’ll tell me.”

Beltran snorted. “Straight out of the Cadet handbook. Well, you’re right about the first one, but maybe not so much with the second. You and the others here aren’t exactly cadets. You’ve all got… prior experience.”

The way he said that phrase made it sound like it wasn’t entirely a good thing. Like I know enough to be useful? Or just used up? thought Norm. He used the excuse of finishing his sandwich to think of a reply. “Glad I can be helpful, Agent Beltran,” he eventually offered. “It’s an even longer walk from here to Lubbock.”

Norm relaxed a little at the way Beltran chuckled. It had been the right thing to say, then. He hadn’t been sure.

They’re better than what they’re replacing. Really.

Clearing houses was surprisingly dull.

The residences in Churchill were one and two-story row houses that felt like they were huddling together against the cold. It was early June, so the place wasn’t freezing, but there was an underlying taste of chill in the air. There was also the reek of fear, resignation, and general sweat in all the houses, but Norm assumed that sort of thing could be expected in the aftermath of a FSOB roundup.

At least there weren’t any bloodstains. “Most of the residents came along quietly,” Beltran explained as the two of them methodically went through the first house. “The ones who didn’t got sticky rounds, which calmed them right down. Sometimes somebody gets killed anyway, sometimes they don’t. We got lucky, this time.”

“Yeah. The Bureau seems, ah, a bit…” Norm slammed his mouth shut.

“…Pickier about that than the Peeps? Yeah, we are.” Thankfully, Beltran was amused.

I’m a little weirded out by how easy it is to make daily wordcount on this. Although not as weirded out as what the previous regime must have been like, to make these guys feel like a breath of fresh air.

“The town has already been cleared.” Special Agent Clarita Pardal had the studious non-accent ambitious hispanics used. Norm had been hearing that non-accent a lot during training. “All known residents of the town have been put into cold sleep. Domestic animals have been requisitioned and redistributed; pets were kept with their owners, when feasible. Lucky you! The hard part has been done already.” There was a faint murmur as the agents at the briefing chuckled, followed by a rippled echo as the trainees followed suit.

Pardal flashed a quick smile, but it didn’t last long. “So. Churchill is officially now listed as depopulated.” She looked around at the twenty four pairs of agents and trainees. “One of your duties will be to double-check that. Human beings are clever, and imperfect. Don’t expect to find a holdout, but don’t be surprised, either. Yes?”

A trainee lowered her hand. “What are the rules of engagement, Agent Pardal?”

“Detain anyone you find. If they’re not supposed to be here, then they’re supposed to be on the Arthur Phillip, and in cold sleep. We’ll straighten out any special circumstances after they’ve been processed. So… capture, if they’re not armed or actively a threat. Accept surrenders. If they resist being detained, you are authorized to use force, including deadly force. Also: take prisoners. Let me be explicit about that: the use of ‘no quarter’ is not authorized.” She looked around at the group. “You should probably start assuming that this will be Federal policy, going forward. There’s a new broom, ladies and gentlemen. Don’t get in its way.”

So, yeah, this is in the same universe as GHOSTS ON AN ALIEN WIND.

Seen from the sky, the alien transport was huge. It couldn’t have been anything else, either: the impossibly clean lines were still beyond the reach of humanity, even decades after No Contact. It nestled in the waters by the north side of town as if it’d been designed to rest there, and Norm Baker thought it very well might have been the most beautiful made thing that he’d ever seen.

Beltran was clearly more used to sights like that, though. “That’s the Arthur Phillip,” he told Baker. “Horrible name, but the Old Man had a rough sense of humor. We’ve got it fitted to take a hundred thousand settlers at a time, so Churchill was a drop in the bucket. It’s still only half full as it is.”

The helicopter cabin was a lot quieter than Norm had expected, and had the jarring clash of aesthetics you associated with jury-rigged alientech. But it worked, like all alientech did. “I thought we were moving transportees to camps, then sending them to the colony worlds all at once?”

“That’s the old way,” Beltran grinned. “The eggheads finally got cold sleep reverse-engineered, so now we can just pod transportees up and stack them in the ship until we’ve got a full load. It’s nice and quiet, and we can stuff in three times as many people without casualties. Hell, we can even move the ship to the process sites, and that cut down the spoilage rate all on its own.” He looked out the window at the scene below. “Nothing against the Old Man,” he continued, “but it’s a Hell of a lot better now.”

#commissionearned

Oh, things look so much better for our protagonist, now…

Federal Security Agency
Training Facility Iod
Mt. Shasta
State of North California

Three months later

“Cadet Baker! Front and center!”

It was weird how the FSB never used a computer, or even an intercom, when a person would do. It made everything feel less urgent, more deliberate. Norm jumped right up and ran over anyway. The trainers might have been a lot less vicious than Peep drill instructors (the idea of them getting hanged had been a cheery one), but they expected you to go everywhere on a dead run.

At least you didn’t have to scream. “Baker present and ready, instructor!” Norm declaimed, in that pitched-to-carry growl the FSB expected. He did stand straight as a board when he did that, but the instructors hadn’t given him crap about it. All the ex-Peeps did the exact same thing.

The instructor was a runner, but she didn’t correct him. “You’re being pulled for your field assessment, Cadet Baker. Here’s your paperwork. Report with your go-bag in one half hour at the room in your packet. Questions?”

“No, instructor! Everything I need will be in my paperwork, instructor! I am to arrive with my go-bag at the assigned room in one half hour for my field assessment, instructor!”

She nodded “All correct. Get going, Cadet Baker!”

“Yes, instructor!” And, perforce, Baker got going.

Huh. I actually have a decent idea of how this is going to go.

That was a gamble, which paid off with a laugh. “Good! You’re one of the quick ones. And it’s ‘Agent Beltran,’ not ‘sir.’ I’m a cop, not a headknocker.”

He looked at his folder, which was made from actual paper. “And you are… Norman Baker. Born 2183, grew up in Lubbock, Johnson, was drafted for your one-year after high school. You voluntarily re-upped with the Peeps last year, though, took a five-year oath.” His eyes snapped on Norm. “Why?”

Norm exhaled — in relief. He’d guessed right about whether he’d been asked this question. He even decided that it was time for the truth. “The Peopl– the Peeps never had any trouble paying me, Agent Beltran. With the Old Man not doing so well–”

“Dying, Baker,” Beltran corrected him. “President Lewis was dying. We can say things like that, now.”

“Right. Sorry. With the Old Man dying, it seemed smart to stay in service, right? No matter what happened, I’d get fed, and my family’d get my stipend. I wasn’t staying in to, you know, make a pile of cash or anything. I just wanted to keep my head down until the dust cleared.”

New story! Set in the same world as GHOSTS ON AN ALIEN WIND. The title is a placeholder. You may also recognize the name.

People’s Defense Citadel #235
State of Riel
(Saskatchewan, Former Canada)
2103 AD

They decided to hang Danny the Deev in the morning.

Norm Baker (Corporal, People’s Liberty Corps) hoped that meant that the executions were over. They’d been pulling the PLC troops out of confinement three times a day for a week now to watch the hangings. At first, it was horrible, watching your own get treated like some kind of seccy rebel. After a while, you got numb. A while after that, you started counting how many of your buddies were still around and not kicking, and then it was horrible again.

But Danny was up there, all alone. And he was easily the worst bastard on base, except for the major who used to run this Citadel. Her, they had hanged right away. So maybe the worst was over? He figured they had to end sometime, unless the FSOBs were just gonna process the whole Citadel, right down to the foundations. And they could have done that any time they liked.

None of this showed on Norm’s face. He didn’t say a word about it, either. Not to any of the guys in his barracks, not to anybody in the chow line at breakfast afterward, and for damn sure not to anybody sitting at his table. He didn’t need the blinking collar around his neck to remind him to keep his damn fool mouth shut, except to shove food in. A lot of the guys who took a turn doing the gallows gavotte had talked themselves into the line. He wasn’t gonna do anything stupid, unless it wouldn’t matter anyway.

#commissionearned