Tag: snippet

Passageways!

There was a choice of weird things.

The passageway was carved out of bedrock, which was surprising. What was even more surprising was how it primitive it looked. There were lights at regular intervals, and those were modern; but the wood support beams and reinforcements were old. And not just regular old; Norm wasn’t an expert on wood, but some of these posts looked like they’d been there forever. They’d have to be, he thought. We’ve been using eternaplas since No Contact. So… decades, I guess?

Beltran hadn’t sounded worried when Norm pointed this out. “Nothing’s creaking, so it’s not going to collapse on us,” he noted. “If you’re worried about it, don’t lean on the wood.”

“Sure,” admitted Norm. “But this is weird, right?”

“Yeah, it is,” Ashelyn agreed as she stopped a moment to look at one beam. “Especially since… is that tar?” she asked. “Since when did people put tar on wood?”

“A long time ago,” Beltran told them. “It’s good for keeping wood from rotting in wet conditions.” He sniffed the air. “Mind you, it’s dry as a bone down here. Maybe it wasn’t when they built the tunnel.”

Note: any errors about clearing rooms or investigating facilities are my own, and will not be subject to later review.

It felt complicated to have a scattergun slung over his shoulder again. Norm had qualified on authority-class weapons when in the Peeps, and he wasn’t a bad shot with them. But he’d hadn’t yet had to shoot a person, and getting transferred to the FSB had been a quiet relief. You could kill somebody with a sticky round, but only if everybody involved was having a bad day.

Yet here he was, sliding down a ladder and into the silent gloom, a lethal weapon on his back. At least there was an IR flare down there already, so it wasn’t silent blackness. That would have well and truly sucked.

Norm’s training kicked in at the bottom as he skipped sideways away from the ladder, readying his scattergun as his IR lenses came fully online. At first glance he was in a square room, bare of everything except two mattresses against one wall. No lights, no outlets, nothing except a door to his left. He didn’t touch a single thing as he yelled “Clear!” to the three waiting above.

Ashelyn came down less gracefully than Norm had, and her own step-and-ready wasn’t as practiced. Clearly the Coexisters hadn’t gone in for as much training in room-clearing. No, they did all their dirty work behind a desk, Norm told himself snidely, before catching himself. The Department of Coexistence had been tossed in the same mass grave as the People’s Liberty Corps. There was no sense in holding a grudge against the dead.

Okay. I know how this story goes, now.

Most of the homes in Churchill were either two-story townhouses, or single-story double-wide trailers. This one was a bit more solid, if you ignored the plywood covering one window. “This was one of the ones where they used flash-bangs,” Beltran explained as they entered the house. “Sticky rounds, too. Hola, Elena.”

“Talk anglo, Carlos,” the other Agent smilingly chided back at him as they shook hands. She was yet another hispanic, maybe in her late thirties, and Norm thought she’d be pretty in a spare way if she didn’t look so tired.  “It makes them feel better. This is your charge?”

“He is. Norm Baker. Ex-Peep. Yours is… Ashelyn Mullin-Clark. Used to be a Coexister, right?”

“Yeah. She’s watching the door,” Agent Madole told Beltran while shaking hands with Norm (which surprised him, actually). “You know. Just in case.”

“You haven’t cleared it? Good. Must have been tempting, though,” Beltran observed as they entered the house. Norman’s nose twitched at the combination of ozone, pepper, and vomit he subconsciously associated with sticky rounds, and he hastened to put on a mask. The other two ignored the reek.

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.”