The End of All Things (28 page)

The protesters had not taken it into their heads to try to rush the skyscraper, but it was early in the day yet. Rather than wait for the inevitable, and the inevitable casualties to both protester and security forces, the Colonial Union had decided to employ the latest in less than lethal protest management: the hurricane funnel. One was being placed directly in front of my squad.

“It looks like an Alp horn,” Powell said, as it was placed and started expanding out and up.

“Alpenhorn,” I said. I was a musician in my past life.

“That’s what I said,” Powell replied, and then turned to Salcido. “You’re the weapon nerd here. Explain this.”

Salcido pointed up, at the very long tube snaking up to the sky, now about two hundred feet up. “Air gets sucked into the thing from up there. It gets drawn down and accelerated as it goes. It hits the curve, gets an extra push, and out it goes that way.” He waved in the general direction of the protesters. “We set a perimeter length, and anytime one of them tries to get past it, the funnel ramps up a breeze and blows them down.”

“Which should be fun to see,” Lambert said. “Although these things are awfully inefficient, if we’re talking
real
crowd control. It’s like we’re daring them to try to cross that line.”

“They’re not supposed to be efficient,” I said. “They’re supposed to send a message.”

“What message? ‘We’ll huff and we’ll puff and we’ll blow your protest down’?”

“More like ‘We don’t even have to shoot you to render your protest utterly pointless.’”

“We seem to be sending a lot of messages recently,” Lambert noted. “I’m not sure the message we’re sending is the message they’re receiving.”

“The message this time will be a blast of wind that could knock over a house,” Salcido said. “It’ll get received.”

“And we’re not worried about getting sucked out into the rioters,” Powell said. “Because that would be bad.”

Salcido pointed upward again. “That’s why collection happens up there,” he said. “Plus there’s some airflow mitigation happening on this side of the thing.”

“All right,” Powell said.

“Just…”

“What? Just
what
?”

“Don’t get
too
close to the thing when it’s running.”

Powell looked sourly at Salcido. “You’re fucking with me, aren’t you.”

“Yes. Yes I am. Fucking with you. You’re right, by all means, stand close to the thing when it goes off. Nothing bad will happen to you at
all
.”

“Lieutenant, I may have to shoot Sau.”

“Both of you, knock it off,” I said. I was watching the technicians finishing setting the thing up, which mostly consisted of them watching it, because like most things involving the Colonial Defense Forces, it was designed to operate with minimal assistance from humans, who were without exception the moving part most likely to fail. Left and right of where we were, other hurricane funnels were also unpacking themselves while technicians stood by. In all there were twenty-four of the things, circling the building.

When they were all set up the chief technician nodded to me; I nodded back and took control of the three funnels closest to me. I set the perimeter to thirty meters, which was ten meters further out than where the closest protesters were standing. I was pinged by the other seven CDF squads manning the other funnel stations, all of which I was commanding, letting me know they were online and also set at thirty meters. I stepped out in front of the funnels so the protesters could see me. They started jeering immediately, which was fine.

“Attention protesters,” I said, and my voice was amplified mightily by the funnel directly behind me, too loud for anyone to ignore. As close as I was to the thing I might have been deafened if I hadn’t already had my BrainPal dial down my hearing for a minute. “I am Colonial Defense Forces Lieutenant Heather Lee. In one minute, I will be establishing a protest perimeter of thirty yards entirely around this building. Your voluntary cooperation with this goal would be greatly appreciated.”

This received the response that I entirely expected it would.

“Suit yourself,” I said, and stepped back behind the funnel. “Turn down your ears,” I instructed my squad. Then I turned to the commander of the Kyiv police and nodded to him; he yelled at all his officers to fall back behind the funnels. They did, taking the metal barriers with them. A cheer went up from the crowd and it started to surge forward. I turned on the funnels.

The output from the funnels went from zero to fifty kilometers per hour in about three seconds. The crowd, sensing a challenge, pressed forward with more determination. In another three seconds the funnels were blasting at a hundred klicks per hour; in another five seconds at one hundred and thirty. At one hundred and thirty kilometers an hour, the funnels also emitted a horrendous, eardrum-crushing note designed to encourage crowd dispersal. I turned my hearing up a little to listen.

It was a very low E.

Did I mention these things are REALLY LOUD?
sent Salcido, over the squad’s BrainPal channel.

The crowd was pushed back despite their best efforts. Some of them flung bottles and other objects toward the funnels and were surprised when they shifted course right back at them. Apparently you don’t have to understand physics to protest.

When the last of the protesters were pushed back to the thirty-meter line the funnels ramped their output down to thirty kilometers an hour, and the low E dissipated. The crowd muttered and shouted, angry. The Kyiv police, no longer needed, filed into the administration building, where they went to the roof and were airlifted out.

And so it went. Over the next hour, occasionally one or two of the protesters would try to see if they could sprint to the barricade before the funnels could push them back. The answer: No.

“That kind of looks like fun, actually,” Lambert said, as the latest protester blew back across the plaza. His speaking voice was augmented in my ear by his BrainPal signal.

“Don’t be so sure.” Powell pointed to a streak of red on the plaza, where the protester’s head had connected with the concrete.

“Well, I don’t want to do
that,
obviously,” Lambert said. “The rest of it might be fun.”

“Hey, boss,” Salcido said, and pointed out into the crowd. “Something’s up.”

I looked out. In the distance the crowd was parting as a motor vehicle made its way up toward the front. I identified it with my BrainPal as a heavy truck of local manufacture, without the trailer that usually accompanied these types of haulers. As it moved closer to the front, the crowd started chanting and hollering.

“Why the hell didn’t the police stop that thing all the way at the back?” Lambert asked.

“We sent them home,” I said.

“We sent the ones up
here
home,” Lambert said. “I find it hard to believe at least
some
of the Kyiv police aren’t still on duty.”

“Sau,” I said. “Are these things going to stop that?”

“The funnels?”

“Yeah.”

“Lieutenant, these babies can blast out wind up to three hundred kilometers per hour,” Salcido said. “They won’t just stop the truck. They’ll pick it up and toss it.”

“Right back into the crowd,” Lambert noted.

“There is that,” Salcido agreed. “That is, the part of the crowd that is not
also
tossed straight up into the air, along with anything else that isn’t nailed down, and probably some stuff that is.” He pointed down the plaza at the sculpture. “If these things go top speed, I wouldn’t count on that staying put.”

“Maybe these things weren’t such a great idea after all,” Lambert said.

The truck, at the front of the crowd now, started blinking its lights, as if to threaten us. The crowd cheered.

“Standard electric engine for something that size, if it’s not modified,” Salcido said. He’d pulled up the same manufacturer ID I had. “It’s gonna take it a couple of seconds to get up to ramming speed.”

The driver of the truck let loose on his horn, issuing a blast almost as loud as the funnels.

“This will be interesting,” Lambert said.

The wheels of the truck squealed as the driver floored it.

“Powell,” I said and sent at the same time.

The front of the truck blossomed into flame as Powell’s rocket shoved itself into the truck’s engine compartment and erupted, shattering the truck’s battery banks and puffing out the hood with an explosive
crump
. The spinning wheels, robbed of momentum before they could completely grip, lurched forward slightly and then stopped, barely moving a few meters. The driver of the truck bailed out of the cab and took off running, one of many protesters who decided they’d had enough for the day.

A few still stood near the truck, uncertain of what they should be doing next. Powell shoved another rocket into the truck, this time into the empty cab. It went up like the proverbial Roman candle. More protesters decided it was time to go home.

“Thank you, Powell,” I said.

“Took you long enough to ask,” she said, cradling her Empee.

*   *   *

“Those things aren’t exactly a long-term solution, now, are they?” Lambert asked. He nodded to the hurricane funnels, now five stories below us. The four of us were in a conference room that had been turned over as a rest area for the CDF recruited for guard work.

“It’s local midnight and that crowd out there’s not going anywhere,” Powell said. “I think the funnels might be a feature for a while.”

“It’s going to make going to work difficult for the Colonial Union folks who work in this building.”

“Maybe they’ll all telecommute,” Salcido said.

Lambert looked back out at the crowd. “Yeah. I would.”

“How much longer are we here?” Powell asked me.

“The technicians are training the Kyiv police on operating the things,” I said. “So a couple more days.”

“And then what? Off to the next planet to squash another protest or stomp on another building?”

“You wanted to stomp that building in Kyoto,” Lambert reminded Powell.

“I didn’t say otherwise,” Powell said, turning to Lambert. “I didn’t mind putting a rocket through that truck today, either. The alternatives might have involved me getting hurt or killed. So, fine.” She turned back to me. “But this wasn’t the gig I signed up for.”

“Technically speaking, you didn’t know what the gig was when you signed up for it,” Salcido said. “None of us did. All we knew was we were getting off the planet Earth.”

“Sau can play lawyer all he wants, but you know what I mean, Lieutenant,” Powell said.

“Ilse’s right,” Lambert said. “This is our third mission in a row where we’re trying to keep a lid on people rebelling against the Colonial Union.”

“These sort of missions have always been part of the deal,” I said. “Before you three came on I and the
Tubingen
were called on to squash an uprising on Zhong Guo. Some people there got it in their head that they wanted an alliance with Earth.”

“Did they tell the Earth about that?” Salcido asked.

“Don’t think they did,” I said, and then motioned out the window, to the protest. “My point is that
this
is, in fact, our mission. Part of it, anyway.”

“Okay, but three in a row,” Lambert said.

“What about it?”

“Has that happened before, in your experience? Ever?”

“No.”

“And you’ve been in the CDF how long, now? Six years?”

“Seven,” I said. “And three months.”

“Not that you’re counting,” Powell said.

“If you don’t you lose track,” I said. I turned back to Lambert. “All right, yes, it’s unusual.”

“And that doesn’t bother you?” Lambert asked. “Wait—I phrased that poorly. I mean to say, you don’t find it troublesome? Because when Ilse here, our current queen of the ‘who gives a shit’ line of thinking, is starting to get tired of our act, there might be a problem.”

“I didn’t say I was tired of it,” Powell said. “I said it’s not what I signed up for.”

“There’s a distinction in your brain between the two,” Lambert said.

“Yeah, there is,” Powell said. “I’m not
tired
of this. I can do this shit in my sleep. But I don’t see it as
my
job. My job is shooting the hell out of aliens who are trying to kill us.”

“Amen to
that,
” Salcido said.

“What we’re doing here, I mean, really, who gives a shit?” Powell said. She waved out the window. “These people are protesting. So what? Let them protest. They want to break up with the Colonial Union, let them.”

“When the other species come down to scrape them off the planet, then
your
job would get harder,” I pointed out.

“No it wouldn’t, because they’re not part of the Colonial Union anymore. Fuck ’em.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever told you how much, and in a twisted way, I assure you, I admire your commitment to amorality,” Lambert said.

“It’s not amoral,” Powell said. “If they’re part of the Colonial Union, I’ll defend them. That’s my job. If they want to go their own way, fine. I don’t see it as my job to stop them. But I also won’t stop the aliens from shoving them into a pot if they do, either.”

“Maybe that’s what we need,” Salcido said. “One of these planets to go it alone and get the hell kicked out of them. That would bring the rest of them back into line.”

“But that’s the problem, isn’t it?” Lambert said. “It’s not just one of them. Not just one planet. It’s a bunch of them, all at the same time.”

“It’s that thing,” Salcido said. “That group. Equilibrium. Showing up and doing that data dump.”

“What about it?” Powell asked.

“Well, it makes sense. All of these planets with people getting worked up all of a sudden.”

“They’re not getting worked up
all of a sudden
,” Lambert said. “That rebellion in Kyoto was long-cooking. And the lieutenant here made the point about putting down a rebellion a year ago, on … where?”

“Zhong Guo,” I said.

“Thank you. Maybe that Equilibrium thing is crystallizing action now, but whatever it’s tapping into has been there already for years.”