Spoiler
Back on the ground floor, Phan Thi Lac looked over the civilians still inside the building, looking back at her nervously. They hadn’t been a concern earlier when the plan was to bug out, but now that everyone was trapped in here…
“We could keep them as hostages,” Ngan said, coming up behind her. “They’ll hesitate to try anything that risks getting two or three hundred civilians killed.” Lac glared at him, and he raised his hands in a defensive gesture. “Was just putting it out there. I don’t actually want to do it, either.”
She looked at the crowd again. Shopkeepers, farmers, factory techs, students, interns, homemakers, service workers… My people, for all that they didn’t realize it. They whose lives, whose future she was fighting for.
The phone was in her hand again, and she connected it to the building’s PA system. “Everyone!” She stepped forward, arms raised, the speakers carrying her mezzo-soprano clearly throughout the Market. “There’s going to be fighting here soon. We’ll let you out of here before that happens. Please remain calm until then.”
A quick conference with her subordinates worked out the details, and ten minutes later, there was a double file queue lining up near of the main entrance. A holoprojector created a large, waving white flag outside the door, and Son stepped slowly out into the small courtyard, arms spread, all weapons left behind. Well, mostly. Lac had personally searched him before he left, but even she only knew about the knife in his right boot.
An officer with the rank tabs of a police captain stepped out from the barricades, approaching the rebel slowly. “Captain Rua, People’s Police”, he said evenly. “I don’t suppose you’re here to make my life easier by surrendering?”
The other man smiled thinly. “Sergeant Son, Longian Resistance Front. I’m afraid I can’t indulge you on that score, Captain.”
“Thought not.” He considered Son’s hard visage for a while, then decided this scenario was not one for false bonhomie or beating around the bush. “What is the purpose of this parley?”
“As you probably realize, we’ve got a few hundred civilians trapped in the building with us. We’d like to let them out, and I’m here to let you know our plans so they can leave safely.” Smiling thinly, now: “Wouldn’t want you to shoot up a bunch of innocents or anything.”
Rua's eyes widened for a second or so. Then he nodded, studiously ignoring the implied “as good as you goons are at that sort of thing”. “I see. In that case, perhaps we should step over to somewhere we can speak with my superiors?”
“Alright. When I give the signal, walk through the door slowly, and in orderly fashion. The police will receive you outside the gatehouse. Don’t shove, jostle or run, and don’t dither around. Understood?”
Murmurs of assent came up from the crowd. None of the people to whom this was addressed were inclined to disobey. Despite the palpable relief at the prospect of escaping this nightmare, the situation was still tense, and nobody wanted to cause a misunderstanding that led to someone getting shot.
Ngan looked at Lac, and when she nodded, he waved the crowd forward. “Alright, start moving. Slowly, now.”
They watched the civilians streaming out the double door, careful not to rush for all their eagerness. In three minutes two-thirds of the crowd had been cleared, and Lac let her gaze sweep over the people continuing to file out of the building. Along came a tall, pale man, trying – and failing – to look inconspicuous, sweat beading his forehead.
“Not you, oppressor.” She reached out and grabbed him by his starched shirt collar.
The man – a manager for the million-cred conglomerate that owned the building – struggled violently, but Lac was quite strong for her size, and restrained him long enough for one of the rebels to apply a good roll of duct tape. The line stopped as the other civilians gawked at the scene, a few startled gasps coming up, but a few shouted orders and a prod with the muzzle of a gun got it moving again. After the third time the scene was repeated, nobody even stopped anymore when someone – usually a foreigner or someone recognizably wealthy – was dragged out of the shuffling flow.
Before long the market was cleared, aside from the LRF members and their half-dozen suitably trussed-up hostages. The shutters for the main entrance were lowered again, and the cell went to work rigging up explosive traps and setting up barricades.
Lac was helping to move a bench when one of the junior rebels came running up. “Chief. Lee’s clinic on the third floor is still open.”
She dropped the bench and ran up the escalators. In another situation she might have thought to knock, but here she simply shoved the door open as soon as she reached it.
The woman in the green lab coat, seated at the reception desk, didn’t look up from her report. “Go away. I’ve got no business with you.”
Lac folded her arms. “Are you going to tell me you were so busy you didn’t hear the order to evacuate?”
“And leave my patients?” She waved a hand at the door to the ward. “One is unconscious, and another is in no shape to walk even the distance out of this building. If you’re willing to call an air ambulance and carry a stretcher, we can see about moving them to another hospital.” She shrugged. “They ought to have been in one already, but with the recent budget cuts, well, the lines to get into a government hospital are pretty long.”
And whose fault is that, dragon-head? Lac wanted to snarl, but restrained herself. There were no grounds for blaming the good doctor for the decline in social spending during and after the civil war, simply because she was one of the ethnic minority that heavily populated Longia’s social elite. And… she had to admit, Dr. Lee had gained a lot of respect in her book with her willingness to stick it out in what would likely become a battleground soon enough.
“Will they be fine if we leave them here for a while?”
Lee nodded, still not looking up. “There shouldn’t be any problems. It’ll be somewhat bothersome if my nurses don’t show up to work tomorrow, but I’ll manage.”
“Alright, then. We can try to keep the fighting away from the clinic, at least.” Turning to leave, said over her shoulder: “Let us know if you need anything.”
Captain Rua had reason to be displeased. He’d wondered whether the rebels weren’t getting the better end of the deal letting their hostages go; debriefing them had required him to detach half a squad, and getting them to the nearest bus/metro hub so they could find their way required the other half. That was added to the two full squads spent just keeping away curious onlookers from the scene.
Still, that problem was a minor one compared to what he still had to solve.
He leaned back in his chair as he studied the building plan projected above the plastic table in front of him. It was a moderately uncomfortable chair, as befit the fast-food joint he’d commandeered for his CP.
Well, I still have enough men to keep the Vine Market locked down. Not that the rebels seem inclined to go anywhere. Now if only –
One of the constables burst into the room, a loud whirring sound audible through the open door. “You need to see this, sir. We’ve got a military unit overhead.”
Rua sprang to his feet, then walked outside more sedately – it wouldn’t do to be seen rushing. A Skyrider VTOL transport was hovering thirty meters overhead, rappel lines dangling from under its tail, and he fought down a scowl as figures in dark grey battle armor leaped from the open hatch and slid down the cables to the ground. A glance to the side showed another dropship doing the same thing further down the block, and he could hear at least one more.
One of the first soldiers down walked over, and Rua looked up at his closed visor. In that suit, the faceless marine towered a full foot over him, and he felt like a belligerent child facing off an adult in an authority position. Which went perfectly with his present mood, truth be told.
“You in charge here?”
“That’s right. Captain Rua, People’s Police. Who are you and what are you doing here?”
“Your bosses thought you might need a little help. So we got drafted to solve your rebel problem.” He thumped his own armored chest with a fist. “First Lieutenant Alon Shalev, Hegemony Marines, at your service. Or not, as the case may be. We’re taking over here, captain.”
Rua ground his teeth. “I asked for a professional negotiator. Not a bunch of armored goons.”
If Shalev took offense at that barb, he gave no sign of it – at least, none that was visible outside the suit. “Maybe. But what you or I asked for doesn’t enter into it, it seems. Our orders are to secure the perimeter and prepare for an assault on the building. Seems like someone in there,” he gestured at the Vine Market, “really *** off your government.”
By now the dropships had finished unloading, and the noise of their engines faded as they flew off for parts unknown. A full squad of marines in armor were strutting about, like big mastiffs showing off before the alley mutts, drawing more than a few stares from the police officers. “So it seems,” Rua heard himself mutter. “If you’ll excuse me, Lieutenant, I’ve got a few calls to make.”
In a battered downtown tenement 6.7 kilometers from the incident area, Dinh Thi Huyen crouched before a dressing table in the closet, staring at the communicator atop it. The display showed a fuzzy blur; there was no need for faces, nor a desire to give anyone who got past the encryption the ability to see them.
“I can muster a platoon-sized element within half an hour. A company will take three hours to assemble and get into position. The situation could resolve itself before then, of course, but I’ll organize the force anyway if you wish.”
“...”
“No, sir, I don’t think it’s a good idea. If it was just the police I’d say go in and pound them flat. But with the Hegemony Marines on top of that…
“Yes, we might still win if we threw a couple of companies at them. But at what cost? We’d be lucky to be left with more than two score troops afterwards. Mau forgive me for saying this, but we cannot justify sacrificing fifty or a hundred men to save nine. Worse, we’d reveal just how much hardware we’ve been stockpiling while we’re still vulnerable. When that happens, the rebellion is finished.”
“... …”
“We could ask. But then, they were never supposed to get raided in the first place, much less have to face the Hegemony. Someone – I imagine it’s the good chairman – is pulling the strings on this one harder than we can.”
“...”
“It does seem that way, yes.” She shook her head. “I’m sorry, Ngo.”
After closing the connection, Huy?n stepped out of the dingy closet and walked to the bedroom window. The midmorning sun was already approaching its zenith, unoccluded by the puffy cumulus clouds drifting in the distance. Strange how such a pleasant, sunny day could feel so gloomy.
She rested her elbows on the windowsill, gazing past the well-worn buildings of the inner city towards the horizon, and thought of compatriots trapped in the Vine Market. Lac, the young woman who’d left a life in the lap of luxury to fight for those beneath her. Ngan, an unassuming lad who’d always been there when his comrades needed him. Son, perhaps the model of the patriotic traitor.
Tomorrow, the LRF’s agitprop pieces would name them martyrs. But Huyen never called them that in her own mind. They were and would always be just – her children.
Lac looked out grimly over the atrium, one fist closed tightly around the grip of her PDW.
The cell was never large to begin with – it mostly served as a recruiting office and transshipment point, not a depot or base camp – and they’d moved almost all the materiel out when the warning of the raid came. Had it actually taken place the day after tomorrow as it was supposedly going to, all of them would have been long gone instead of being trapped in here.
They did still have a few things. Two anti-armor rifles, which she’d given to Son and one of the others. Three tripod-mounted sentry guns, with full magazines of AP ammunition and scanners alert for unrecognized intruders. And kilos of blasting compound, with multi-function detonators. There was still no prospect of them surviving an assault, of course, but against the Longian police, they could have turned the Vine Market into a slaughterhouse. With the Hegemony Marines outside – a wave of bleak fury and hatred washed over her, but she pushed it aside – they might even take half their number with them into the afterlife. Might.
She wanted to give a rousing speech before their last stand, something that would be quoted generations from now. But no suitable words came to mind; only a memory of a little girl who’d, asked to speak in front of the class on her first day at school, been so petrified that she burst into tears. Looking back on it now made her lips quirk in humor, but she shook the thought away; this was not the time for reminiscence.
The Viners would just have to settle for her steady, reassuring presence. She fastened her combination gas mask and multi-optic goggles, a gift from the LRF’s mysterious sponsors, and the others did the same. Now – only the wait.
“This is a mistake, ma’am,” Rua grated in front of the communicator on the small wooden table in his impromptu command post. “They still have hostages in there, and the kind of firepower the Marines brought with them is likely to get them all killed. And does the government really want the PR mess that’ll result from bringing in foreign military units on a police operation?”
“I share your concerns, captain,” the woman on the other end said, “but there’s no use arguing it with me. The order came from the Inspector-General himself.”
He started on a string of curses, then looked at the frowning face on the holo and thought better of it. “Fine. I’ll just file another protest when I get back. In the meantime, what am I expected to do here?”
“Your official orders are to provide the Marines with any assistance they require. How any such requests might be fulfilled is entirely up to your discretion. And yes, the Hegemony CO is now officially in charge of this operation.” They’d known each other for years; the inspector’s slight shrug conveyed but you’ll probably get the blame if things go belly up along with I’ll try to cover for you if that happens but not at the cost of my own career, with an aside of I’m sure a big boy like you can figure out how to make this work, though.
Rua looked back over his shoulder. Lieutenant Shalev was standing against a wall several meters away, at parade rest, projecting an aura of complete indifference. “In that case, I think I’ll just be getting back to work now, ma’am.”
After he’d terminated the connection, his new boss came walking up casually, remarkably quietly. If he hadn’t already known he was there, Rua suspected the Marine could have knifed him in the back before being detected. “Got the answers you needed?”
“I have.” The police captain pushed himself upright. “Well, how can the People’s Police be of service today?”
“For now, I think just keep securing the perimeter.” Shalev looked at the Vine Market, on the other side of the – entirely opaque – restaurant wall. “When the assault actually begins, I’d like to use your SRU boys in the follow-up wave. They could –”
Old-fashioned acrylic window plates – an attempt at giving the building a more “vintage” design – gave way under the impact of smoke grenades, hurled from high-velocity launchers through windows on three sides of the buildings. In moments, most of the Vine Market’s interior was filled with thick, choking, blinding fog.
Seven sensor remotes followed the grenades in. The sentry guns got four inside of three seconds, and with their enhanced-vision equipment their human masters took out the rest with well-aimed small arms fire within four. But that was more than enough time for the little devices to do their work, even if imperfectly, and send their results along the thin fibre cables they’d been hooked to.
“Interesting,” Shalev murmured. “All but two of them are positioned to cover the main entryway, but they mostly don’t seem to be watching it. In fact, they seem more interested in the windows.”
“Quite prescient of them, sir,” First Sergeant Dar commented.
“Or perhaps they know we’re not daft enough to waddle in through the front door.” He drummed two armored fingers on the plastic restaurant table. “And since they know that… it would be tragic if their high expectations of us were disappointed.”
“Even if they’re not expecting that, it’s not exactly an advantageous entry point, sir,” the NCO pointed out.
“I know. Which is why we’ll mostly stick to the existing plan. But if we send in a fireteam in breacher configuration that way simultaneously with the main entry… presenting the enemy with multiple threat axes should give us an edge. The additional mass will be helpful too, in any case.” He looked at Dar. “What do you think?”
The sergeant considered this for a moment. “Makes sense, sir. I just can’t shake the feeling that it makes too much sense.”
“If it was easy to figure out, they wouldn’t need us, Nawaz.” He smiled thinly, even knowing it wasn’t visible under the helmet. “Now, how do we fit the blueshirts into this?”
In a sporting goods store on the second floor, methane canisters were stacked on shelves in a back storage room, courtesy of the delivery Arnaud Bennett had arranged. Their modified electronic valves now responded to a signal from an optical sensor, which in turn got its orders from a carefully aimed laser in a building a hundred and fifty meters away.
The canisters began discharging their contents in the darkness. Slowly, at first, making no sound beyond a subtle hissing noise. Before long the room was filled with flammable gas, diffusing through vent shafts to the rest of the building, and the valves opened further.
The entry was perfectly choreographed.
A wave of stun grenades preceded the assault, blanketing the upper floors of the market with light and sound. (The smoke had largely, but not entirely, dispersed by then.) Lieutenant Shalev led two fireteams from First Squad in a contra-grav leap up the side of the building, the Marines plowing through the plastic windows like so much cardboard, hitting the floor within 273 milliseconds of each other.
The stun grenades hadn’t debilitated everyone in the building, and one of the privates toppled over, her armor and chest cavity penetrated by close-range rifle fire. But that outcome was entirely within expectations, and the rebel gunman was taken down not a second later by the return fire, his unarmored skull offering no protection at all against the ferrous capsules.
Most of the rest of the return fire was irregular and poorly aimed, the dazed and inexperienced rebels triggering their weapons prematurely and perforating the walls, and the front door entry team faced no resistance as their breaching charge demolished the shutters and transparent double doors in a cloud of smoke. Four Marines dove through the entryway, ballistic shields raised.
They quickly discovered why the rebels hadn’t bothered covering that entrance. The knowledge was brief, fleeting.
The armored figures set off an IR sensor set into the ceiling, even through the smoke and debris. The remotes earlier had detected it, but their human masters had paid it no heed, believing it to operate the automated door mechanism. Which it did. It was just also hooked up to several blocks of blasting compound, concealed inside drywalls and crates of fresh produce.
The front half of the corridor vanished in another roaring explosion, far more powerful than the first.
The cylinders in the back room were going full bore now – way past the manufacturer’s safety rating, in fact. Propelled by the release of their pressurized contents, they sprang free of their racks and ricocheted around the room, the violent hammer blows damaging everything in the room they struck. One even punched through the wooden door and made it into the storefront beyond, opening the way for more vents to distribute the CH4 through as much of the building as possible.
No-one took notice. Even if they could hear it over the other noises in the building, they had far more immediate concerns.
Lac dropped behind a display stand, fighting down the urge to collapse into a screaming heap. She was half-deafened from all the explosions, and the gunfire was still raging in the confines of the market, the supersonic cracks coming from seemingly every direction.
Had she even managed to hit anyone, in that brief initial second-and-a-quarter of gunfire? She remembered catching a glimpse of a Hegemony marine falling out the window, chest plating caved in by an anti-armor round, and the thirty-millimeter grenade explosion that shredded Son’s face. Everything else was nothing more than a blur. Through the ringing in her ears she could make out a few curses, screams, the electrical screech of an autogun blown apart and sent tumbling to the floor… but nothing that was helping her make any real sense of the situation.
Another squad was coming in through the windows, and Lac raised her PDW at the large grey form flying in from her left, even as his rifle began tracking her. She fired first, and found the blessings of fortune; three saboted penetrators cleaved through his helmet to penetrate his throat and mouth. The man’s dying motions deflected his rifle slightly, its rounds finding her right shoulder and upper arm instead of her sternum.
Even so, shock spilled her on the floor, white bone glistening in her wounds. She hissed with adrenaline-stifled agony, and even as the gun nearly spilled from her fingers, another enemy rounded the corner with a raised rifle. With no time to pass her weapon to her left hand, she willed her mangled arm upwards, trying to draw a bead on her opponent, staring with cold defiance at Alon Shalev’s faceless helmet.
The laser transmitted another signal, and a small electric igniter in the storeroom triggered. The dispersed gas reacted violently, the resulting fuel-air explosion like the fist of a deity's fury.
For the battered Vine Market, this last bit of abuse was just too much for it to take. The building collapsed on itself, plasticrete crumbling into gravel, alloy steel members buckling and snapping under abruptly increased strain.
With their excellent armor, many of the Marines survived being buried under tons of debris and rubble in the hours and days it took to dig them out. Lieutenant Shalev did not. Nor did any of the LRF members or civilians.