The silver fleet the com.., p.40
The Silver Fleet: The Complete Series, page 40
Sloppy.
The centre of the room was bathed in what passed for natural light down here and Webster indicated to his men that they should stand firm and wait for their hosts to join them. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught sight of Reed unclipping his holster. Castilla did the same. They could obviously read the signs as well as he could, probably better in fact.
The other party stopped ten meters short of them so that the young officer could consult his tablet. The man had ranking insignia which meant nothing to Webster.
“I’m sorry - Commander Webster, is it? I’m Captain Folland of station security. I’m afraid you’re going to have to return to your ship.”
Webster didn’t move.
“Captain Folland, we’re here at the request of the Governor.” He indicated the tablet the man was holding. “If you’d just consult the third page of our documentation.”
The man eyed Webster with feigned disappointment. “I’m sure. Thing is, the Stevedore’s Guild has pretty strict restrictions regarding foreign nationals bearing arms in our workplace.”
He pointed at the holsters worn by his two privates.
“Captain, while I respect your sensitivity in this matter, I would point out that these two gentlemen are my escorts and that as a USDC officer…”
But the other man cut him off. “There’s no use spouting that Confederation crap down here. Last time I looked, this station was operating as an independent sovereign colony. So, you don’t own us just yet. Any authority you might have is inferred as a mark of courtesy so long as you observe our laws. And one of those laws is that all weapons, other than those carried by our staff, are out-lawed in this facility.”
The temptation to ignore Folland and just keep walking was a strong one. The man was all bluster – Webster could read it in his body language. But he had to play nicely. This was his first taste of station bureaucracy and he was just going to have to try and work his way around it the best way he could.
“Perhaps we’ve got off on the wrong foot here, captain. Back there I have a platoon of Marines which Governor Ardent has requested to report to our temporary barracks. Clearly, they need to off-load their equipment.”
“By equipment, I assume you mean weaponry?”
“Well, they wouldn’t be much use without it.”
“Then they’d be operating in clear breech of policy.”
“Which is?”
“That weaponry of any kind must be submitted separately to the Excise Guild so that it can be checked to ascertain whether it’s been used in any prior criminal activity either here or within the confederation of planets generally.”
Webster made the effort to keep his voice calm. “And how long, on average, would this process take?”
“Well, we can’t short-cut the administrative process, commander. Normally we’d talking about a period of a month or so.”
“Well we need to find a way to expedite that. We’re standing here negotiating while an alien ship approaches, threatening to wipe us all out. Is it possible to speak with the Station Administrator?”
“No point. You see, down here, what we say goes. We can’t just let anybody go running around the station with unverified weaponry. Now, if you’d be so kind, I’ll require your men to surrender their weapons with immediate effect.”
The two men flanking Folland still hadn’t raised their weapons though, standing where they were, their weapons were more a threat to Folland than anyone else. Just a moment’s inattention on their part and they would most likely shoot him in the back by mistake.
“Okay,” Webster lifted his hands to demonstrate his compliance. “Let me tell you how we’re going to proceed. But before I do, I’d like you three gentlemen to take a look at Private Castilla’s cap badge. Private Reed, could you explain what that badge denotes and why Private Castilla is qualified to wear it?”
There was a slight pause before Reed spoke.
“Er, sir, that’s a sharp shooter’s badge Private Castilla is wearing.”
Webster was careful to keep looking straight ahead as he spoke. “Private Reed, would you like to tell these gentlemen what your last score was for firearms accuracy?”
“Er, yes sir. In my last assessment I had an accuracy of 74 percent.”
“That’s very impressive,” Webster said. “So how come you’re not wearing one of those badges?”
“Er, that’s a personal choice, sir. Most troopers won’t wear the badge unless they are classed as a Master marksman and that’s an accuracy of 80 percent.”
“So still a ways to go for you, then?”
“Yes, sir, but I’m working on it.”
The two men behind Folland exchanged anxious looks.
“Private Castilla,” Webster continued. “Would you like to tell these gentlemen what your firing average was.”
“My accuracy for that test was adjudged to be 92 percent, sir.”
“And was there a speed drawing aspect to this assessment?”
Webster couldn’t see Castilla’s smile but he was pretty sure it was there.
“Yes, sir, that’s right. The third part of the assessment involves a speed draw round in which you are required to draw your weapon and fire six rounds in under eight seconds.”
“And you’re scored on accuracy as well, aren’t you, private. Out of sixty.”
“That’s right, sir.”
“And what was your score?”
“Fifty-eight, sir. My eye was a little off that day.”
“Very impressive, don’t you agree, Captain Folland?”
Folland made the slightest of slight nods.
“Now,” Webster said. “Let me explain how we’re going to do this.”
*
The platoon gathered in what was normally a changing room inside the main administrative building. LaCruz sat on one of the benches in the middle of the room. It reminded her of when she’d played soccer, waiting for the pre-match team talk. Their temporary barracks had been set up next door in the building’s gymnasium. Security was non-existent and so permanent guards had been posted on both doors.
Marines don’t take kindly to having to surrender their weapons but that’s exactly what they’d been forced to do back on the shuttle. Sergeant Markham had stood at the rear of the transport and called each one of them out in turn. When they handed their firearm over, a lieutenant stored it in the back, a corporal recorded it and Markham handed them an improvised rack tag. It had all proceeded in an orderly fashion but there was no disguising the fact that Commander Webster was making it up as he went along. She felt sorry for Sergeant Markham who seemed about as happy with the set-up as everyone else.
The event was over-seen by three guys in shiny suits who had turned up to officially ‘seize’ the weapons. LaCruz didn’t trust anyone short of a Quartermaster to look after her weapons and certainly not the guy who was supposed to be in charge. She’d have happily snapped his scrawny neck.
Supposedly the deal was that all weapons would be handed over for a nominal registration check before they were returned to them at their new barracks. Word was that they’d wanted to impound them straightaway but that was never going to fly. Still, that hadn’t made the troopers feel any less of a target when they’d boarded the buses taking them to their new billet.
It also didn’t help that when they arrived, the place looked more like a prison than a home for conquering heroes.
There was a lot of bad feeling brewing as they filed into the changing room although this was lightened by the sight of about a dozen weapons containers stacked neatly at the front. Perhaps they were about to be re-supplied?
She’d had a bad experience once stationed on a planet out in the Astares system. Their air support had suddenly been called off and they’d been stuck there for nearly three months fighting against a group of jungle insurgents who had later signed up to the Confederation charter. She hadn’t enjoyed being cut off from the normal chain of command particularly after their rations ran out and they’d been forced to track down their own food. Precious little of it was compatible with the human digestive system and she’d lost a third of her bodyweight before they’d made it home.
In comparison to that, being deprived of her weapon for a short while really wasn’t such a big deal, though you wouldn’t know that listening to the bitching all around her. It seemed that no one had much faith in Commander Webster’s ability to lead the mission of this kind and the loss of their weapons had more or less confirmed this.
Webster seemed to have picked up on this, standing quietly at the back of the room while Sergeant Markham gave the briefing.
“Okay, here’s the thing, we are working as part of the Station Security force. Now I know there’s been a few comments about those fancy uniforms but I would urge you to treat them with respect while we’re down here. They have a rank system very similar to our own, a copy of which I have circulated to all systems so please look at it and respect it.”
He glowered at them then, challenging any of them to say something. Marines naturally assume that just being a Marine automatically puts them ahead of every other member of service personnel with domestic security bodies ranking right at the bottom, but there was a danger here that if the Marines started asserting themselves they may well become distracted from what it was they’d been sent there to do.
“Moving on to our task for today, as you probably already know, we’ve been asked to secure the entrance to the main elevators.”
One of the troopers at the front was projecting a detailed map of the place onto the back wall. LaCruz got her bearings from the two main elevators themselves which were enormous.
“Our first concern is maintaining a secure area in front of the building and with that in mind we’ll be setting up two roadblocks, here and here,” he demonstrated this by tapping the map at two points, leaving a pair of crosses in place. Then the trooper in charge of the display changed the orientation so that they were suddenly looking at everything from street level.
“The street will effectively be closed off, allowing us to syphon people into these two holding areas here and here. A to the left and B to the right. Standard security search. We’re not been made aware of any terrorist groups operating out of here but we need to be vigilant – a bomb on one of those elevators would do an awful lot of damage. The two main elevators are back through here and it’s important we keep things moving.”
“How many people we talking about,” one of the corporals asked.
Markham shot a look to his superior before replying.
“We’ve been told to expect up to fifty thousand in the first twenty-four hours.”
“Through one access point? That’s a lot of people.”
“Which is why we have to keep things moving. An elevator arrives every ninety minutes and each one is capable of carrying between four and five thousand people. So we can’t afford any hold-ups. Even a small delay could prove problematic. Difficult, but nothing we can’t handle.”
Markham clapped his hands together and rubbed them vigorously. “That’s the good news. Bad news is that the people on the ground still don’t know about the ship that’s in-bound. When word does get out, we can expect a lot more people trying to get down to the surface. We’re talking hundreds of thousands. We need to assert our authority here.”
“How we gonna do that?” someone asked. “Shoot ‘em?”
“Can’t shoot nobody if we ain’t got no guns,” someone else pointed out.
This was met with a roar of approval.
“Okay, that’s enough,” Webster said striding to the front, the noise quickly dissipating. “We have a job to do and I’m here to see that it gets done. We’re dealing with frightened civilians here not a bunch of blood crazed insurgents. Everyone is very concerned about the possibility of civilian casualties which is why we’ve agreed to a compromise: we’re going to be storing our actual weapons here for the foreseeable future.”
The mood in the room changed almost immediately. It was a brave man indeed who stood between a Marine and his weapon. If one or two of the troopers had directly challenged him over the issue, LaCruz wouldn’t have been at all surprised. Part of the reason they didn’t was because Webster stood his ground, but the other reason was the man watching his back.
Sergeant Markham.
The moment passed and Webster turned to Markham. “Sergeant, if you’d be so kind.”
“Thank you, sir,” Markham strolled over to one of the air-tight containers and flipped it open. Inside were four substantial looking weapons, all neatly displayed. He took one out and tossed it towards the nearest fire team leader. He repeated the process with the other three.
“If you’ve done any kind of peace keeping work before you’ve probably familiar with this design. These are 20-10s but everyone knows them as Boomers.”
There was a deflated moan from the back of the room but Webster didn’t react. He’d been expecting this.
Markham continued as though he hadn’t heard. “The key thing is that these things are supposed to be non-lethal but we’ll get to that in a minute. They work by exploding pockets of air with enough force to take out rioters three or four at a time.”
A lieutenant raised her hand. “That might be true in the lab, sir, but I’ve used these things in the past. You need to get your range spot-on with these things otherwise they’re useless. If a group rushes you then its damn near impossible to target them effectively.”
“Which is why we’ve organised for you to spend the morning on the shooting range,” Webster cut in.
“We’ve got a shooting range!” someone perked up.
“Not quite,” Markham said. “But we’ve rigged up something in the gym. In a moment you’ll all be issued with a weapon but the thing to remember is that these things aren’t toys – they do have the capacity to blow your ear-drums out so be careful and keep your shots nice and low.”
Markham picked up one of the Boomers and tested the weight of it. When he was done he indicated to one of the privates to start dishing out the rest.
As LaCruz stepped forward to receive her weapon, she caught sight of Grimes on the other side of the room. He rolled his eyes at her in disbelief.
Markham handed her the Boomer. It had similar dimensions to a traditional rocket launcher but was significantly lighter.
“Anything else?” Markham asked.
LaCruz stood there looking stupid. She’d been expecting an ammo clip at the very least though, of course, the Boomer didn’t require one.
Markham, sensing her confusion, indicated a charging handle set laterally along the side of the weapon. “Flick this over and you’ll be good to go for eighteen, maybe twenty shots.”
“What happens when that runs out?”
“Take it back to the transport – you’ll be able to re-charge it there. Takes a couple of minutes.”
“What am I supposed to do if we’re attacked in the interim?”
“I’m sure you’ll think of something.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
It was mid-afternoon before the transport arrived to take the platoon across town to the Amsel Plaza where Webster’s troops would be operating. They had spent much of the morning practising with their new weapons under Sergeant Markham’s watchful eye. They’d practiced mostly using packing cases as targets and the results had been impressive, though they tended to agree that it was pretty difficult to miss such large objects. Towards the end of the morning, the packing cases had started to fall apart and, after a quick consultation with his c.o., Markham had asked for volunteers to stand in as rioters.
As had been suggested earlier, it was a lot more difficult hitting a moving target as opposed to an inert packing case. But when they did manage to get it right the results were impressive, hurling troopers all over the place. Webster made the call to end the session early when Private First Class Shaiju ended up getting concussed. Sergeant Markham didn’t say anything but he got the distinct impression that he thought Webster was being too reserved. Markham then ordered Shaiju and another private named Crick to stay behind and guard the Marines’ actual weapon store. They were being kept at another part of the facility in a large, strong room which had been requisitioned for just that purpose.
The Marines closed off the approach road and then set up their checkpoints. They were at either end of a long concourse crowded by tall buildings on both sides. There were broad gardens flanking the walkways and the office workers who overlooked them watched the whole operation with interest. The truck carrying their construction gear turned up two hours late, but that didn’t stop them from setting up the outer perimeter fence in double quick time. This was reinforced by six heavy planters which Markham had had dragged across from the gardens and placed in front. It was nothing that would likely trouble an insurgent with a deliberate agenda but it would provide the Marines with a decent rallying line if things turned ugly. The whole thing was designed to funnel pedestrians through the gates and up onto the concourse where they could be separated into one of two holding areas for processing. The idea was to split up any large groups before they had an opportunity to cause trouble.
A second team then started work on fortifying the far perimeter fence with the intention of making it secure against anyone trying to storm it from the elevator side. The chances of that happening were very slim but Webster wanted to be prepared.
Even though the Governor had ensured that passengers wouldn’t be charged for their journey down to the planet, it had been agreed that everyone would have to be ticketed in order that they could keep a check on numbers. The tickets had to be booked in advance on-line.
This extra layer of admin immediately caused problems with people turning up to use the elevators finding that they couldn’t walk straight through security. This lead to several angry stand-offs so, eventually Webster was forced to set aside a small tech team in order to show the civilians how to best to access the ticket allocation website.
