by William Cray
Floss heard the buzz of neurobeams as his team pealed off to secure the room. The non-lethal weapons swept onto the surprised occupants, collapsing them into a heap. Floss swiveled his lethal assault rifle to protect his team from anyone not caught by a P-Tek or a neurobeam.
The P-Teks darted to the downed suspects, spreading their restraints around them as they lay on the floor shaking from the beams being held on them.
Floss wrinkled his nose. One of them had released their bowels under the onslaught of noise and disruption. Floss checked the room.
“Clear,” he called out over the teams net. The rest of the team replied the same. P-Teks beeped in response. The house was secure.
Floss checked his chrono. Seventeen seconds. Not bad.
He moved around to the collection point, where P-Teks were wrestling up the suspects to be interrogated and hauled off. A woman looked up at him. Her eyes rolled around in their sockets in a blurry haze. She had stringy red hair tucked into a bun and she was skinny as a rail. One of the P-Teks, swept her up like a filthy rag doll, and carted her out to the transport below.
Floss wiped the sweat off the palms of his hands on the pants leg of his blue tactical uniform. He let the compact assault rifle hang limp around his neck. The rest of the team was now in the central room and they began checking the contents of the tiny apartment, turned drug lab.
A pistol, some shooters, about thirty vials of sin, along with a pile of dirty drug paraphernalia was scattered around the trashed room. A team of NMCPD investigators filed into the apartment after it declared ‘clear’. They inspected the stash of illicit goods and secured the weapons. Gang intelligence analysts were outside, doing forensic analysis and interrogating the dazed perps to piece together the next target.
It looked like a good bust but after long years of UC work, Floss knew this was a marginal find, at best.
The raid and collection teams would grab low level drug dealers and gang members and turn them over to experts would extract whatever information they could from percoms, gang affiliations or any thing else they could wring out of the target, and then roll on to the next target. Every raid would yield new information that could be acted on. It wasn’t complicated, but it took a lot of manpower. As word got out, each raid would get more and more dangerous.
In an enclosed environment like Hab-11, there was nowhere to escape to. Eventually the most fanatic gang members closer to the top of the food chain would start to put up a fight. That’s when things could get nasty and turn Clean Sweep into a bloody street war.
Raids were occurring all over the zone right now. Floss did a stint on a tactical narcotics team years ago, so he volunteered to plus up the numbers of raid teams who were in high demand today. Clean Sweep needed maximum numbers deployed to the assault teams for the first phase of the operation. It was more dangerous, but Floss was confident in the process.
Besides, if he hadn’t volunteered he would probably be out somewhere looking for Duran. This is way more preferable, Floss thought.
Floss sat down on a confiscated container in the apartment. He looked down at one of the stunned perps who was still waiting for a P-Tek come up and tote him out. The variable man with a terribly deformed shoulder looked up at Floss, wagging his tongue at Floss. Floss starred at him for a moment, watching the man try to enunciate his innocence with numb lips and limp tongue.
He was a full timer. The tattoo on his shoulder hump showed he was a low-level gang enforcer for the 8th Street Cru. They were a small time gang of street rats using violence and coercion to stake out a name. Floss didn’t feel sorry for him.
The man had pissed and shit himself already and a pool of spittle leaked from his mouth as he tried to form words. Floss shook his head at the struggling man, “Good morning sunshine.”
Floss’s team leader circled a gloved finger in the air, and it was time to roll. They had more targets on their hit list and his team was resetting for the next one. Plans were starting to download onto his mission computer.
Standing, he looked outside the rooms’ single barricaded window slit and into the street beyond. Through the awakening dawn inside the dome, he could make out the form of a humongous floating barge moving down the street near the dome’s edge. A formidable squadron of red and blue flashes moved along next to it on the street. There would be no going back now.
Emergency Coordination Platform
Barge 1
The Zone
Elijah Cole stood in the Tactical Coordination Center of Emergency Barge One as it hovered over the key intersection of Industrial Way and Skytower. The barge had just completed moving into position through Habitation Dome 11’s construction access lock and was beginning to deploy the covey of military and police vehicles perched on its deck like birds on a rooftop. Intended to serve as an overland supply platform for military operations, his police forces commandeered several of the mobile barges from the Army. Cole converted them as mobile command posts and would use them as a central hub to round up and decontaminate Phelman’s Children swept up in the op.
Riot control teams and patrol squads scurried into the city streets below them, into the dome. The police units slid down on military style grapples, setting the troops down onto the street from the hovering platform. Once on the ground, the police squads and Territorial Guard soldiers deployed into skirmish lines under the long shadow of the barge, forming up in loose formations that would secure each intersection as they passed deeper into the dome’s center.
Behind each of the squads was an army decontamination truck that would scrub down the isolation suited troopers to keep their exposure levels to a minimum. More Territorial Guard troops followed behind the mobile groups with hand held decon units to scrub down civilians as they were flushed out of buildings by the sweep teams.
In all, each barge disgorged over three hundred NMCPD police and soldiers, along with eight trucks and thirty police cruisers. Six similar barges followed, borrowed from the Commonwealth Planetary Force base on Arisa.
The force would clear one block at a time of Phelman’s children and their feral vices. A thousand Constables, and almost three times the number of New Meridian Police riot squads and the supporting Territorial Guard troops were now pouring into the Zone.
More support was arriving from all across the planet. They were going to bring order to the lawless habitation domes and end the series of murders and terrorist attacks radiating into the trench from the anarchy on the surface.
Cole watched the deployments from his command center, slapped together with two tactical response command trailers, bolted together back to back, in the center island of the barge. Command stations inside the trailer were packed tight as the twenty men and women from all the different agencies involved coordinated the operation, all under the nominal emergency powers granted to Cole. ‘Clean Sweep’ had been ordered by the Prime Minister and dropped into Cole’s lap, despite his protests and threats to resign.
Prime Minister Mikoyan finally ordered the operation a few hours ago, but preparations had been planned for years. They still weren’t anywhere near ready, but he ordered it executed anyway. The fire and loss of life at a Zone max house the previous night had forced the Prime Minister into the operation. By all accounts it had been a battle. A person fitting Rory Duran’s description had been in the middle of it. Unfortunately he wasn’t one of the bodies recovered, Cole thought.
Clean Sweep was a political decision. The New Meridian City's magistrate, a political rival of the Prime Minister, laid the blame of chaos inside the Zone on the Prime Minister's doorstep. The machinations of politics had forced Cole into the lead of Clean Sweep. If the operation succeeded, Prime Minister Mikoyan would reap the political up tick in the polls, and if it turned into an epic failure, the PM would lay the blame on the Emperor as his habitual scapegoat for all things wrong and unjust and Cole would take the blame because he was a hold over from a previous administration.
It wa
s a political gamble, but for the Prime Minister and his political standing, it was a win-win. The only way he lost was to do nothing. He was playing politics when lives were at stake, but as with all good politicians his ass was covered.
Cole had argued against it, but Mikoyan had turned the argument against him and used it as the exact reasoning to issue the go-order, now. Doing it wrong could jeopardize innocent lives as well as the lives of his fellow law enforcement, so he reluctantly accepted command.
Nobody in the Zone was innocent, but Phelman’s children were still human beings. Cole knew many would resist the invasion and some of them would foolishly lose their lives, despite the non-lethal confrontation orders he had issued.
The most hazardous part of Phase One was almost complete. It had gone better than he expected but there was still a lot to do before Prime Minister Mikoyan could claim success and everyone could go home. The Prime Minister would declare victory from the successes of today’s raids, but years of undercover work and investigations had been blown by the premature execution of blanket raids. Many of those responsible for the illicit culture in the Zone would be charged with lesser counts, if at all, because on going investigations were now jeopardized with the hastily executed raids. There wouldn’t be time for proper evidence collection on most of those cases. Some very bad people would walk. Others still had already slipped into the trench to wait out the operation, tipped off by crooked officials.
He would get them too eventually, Cole thought.
But on the plus side, raiding teams had already seized enough weapons in the Zone to arm a battalion.
Cole didn’t doubt for an instant that Clean Sweep was the mastermind of Regia Tonaska. Regia had been Cole’s’ friend for twenty years, but somehow this seemed her style of ruthless politick… and in politics, all friends were expendable. To Regia’s credit, she had warned him about an X-factor, and her concerns had proven accurate. There was at least one Imperial cyborg loose in the city and since his arrival; the chaos and its associated body count had only risen.
After days of intense investigation, the name Rory Duran had shown up on a military database. The Ministry of Code Enforcement had come up with the name after a deep search through back channels and professional friendships. A Major Rory Duran, Planetary Force, had come up on a POI list as Missing In Action, dated during the Vendetta. His name appeared on a classified annex just after the occupation and then disappeared again after the Vendetta with the tag M.I.A.-Presumed Dead added almost three years ago. An identical entry had appeared for his partner, Eric Hansen, Chief Warrant Officer-5.
Duran was the centerpiece to all of this somehow. Cole couldn’t be sure what part he played in the events leading up to this operation, but every move he made had been followed by an incident. The bombing yesterday morning, the shooting at the Rachenko apartment and the battle that erupted in the Max club last night. All of those could be traced to Duran in some way. Duran faced a litany of charges as long as his left leg when they finally caught him, including impersonating a law enforcement officer, forgery, resisting arrest, fleeing the scene, assault of a law enforcement officer, grand theft, terroristic threatening, weapons possession, and now murder for the shootings in the Zone.
Floss had left a message for Cole earlier after talking with Duran. Floss couldn’t trace the call, but Duran had brought up a medical diagnosis called Induced Reflexive Hysteria that was somehow related to the Intruder invasion of Earth over a decade ago. It seemed too fantastic that the Intruders could somehow be involved in this, since they had been declared dead and gone as a race since their world was converted to imploding ash during the Vendetta. The Intruders had transformed into a be-all end-all for anti-Imperial conspiracy theorists as a new age boogieman for a decade or more. It would take much harder evidence to convince him that they were involved. No, this is just another layer of cover being used for a human political agenda, Cole thought.
Colonel Cochrane hadn’t provided him with any additional insight either during their brief conversation yesterday. He didn’t have the jurisdiction to force the issue. If he could find Duran, he could get some answers.
Cole turned to watch the final police forces slip off the edge of the barge and onto the magnetic grapples that would lower them onto the street from the barge platform. His command center was humming with activity as units started to report in.
“All units are deployed,” the communication specialist said.
“Ok… good. Give the order, Corporal. “
The last group began to fan out in the intersection. The police units moved out in a phalanx from the center of the street like the pedals of a black flower opening. The irony of the moment was not lost on Cole.
There was nothing else for him to do. He had issued the orders and now the machine moved out on its own. All he could do now was watch and wait. The next time he gave an order, meant something was going wrong.
A communication Technician came up from behind. The tech passed him a message and Cole acknowledged her with a nod.
Rory Duran had been spotted in the Yellow-Three district after attacking a patrol. NMCPD special units were moving in now with P-Teks, as directed. They had him cornered.
Cole looked out into the Zone, watching all the pieces set in motion by Duran’s arrival. “Looks like we will get to finish our conversation, Mister Duran.”
22
Operations Center
Phobos Commonwealth Military Depot
John Cochrane was a ball of nerves. He was using his best command presence to keep under control and not unnerve the young analyst, whose name he couldn’t recall right without looking at his nameplate. The watch ensign was barely qualified as an analyst, so junior Petty Officer, Martes, will have to do, he told himself.
Cochrane used his basic understanding of image interpretation to help as best he could, but his current intelligence job was more about classified document handling rather than actual intelligence gathering.
The multi-spectral cityscape scrolled across the monitor, it’s many colors and shapes outlining familiar and unfamiliar landmarks in the city’s architecture. Cochrane didn’t believe that an Intruder mind control tower could be built down in the trench in secrecy, so he directed the young petty officer to concentrate on the outskirts of the city, on the surface. If the mind control tower were plated with Tri-Lum then the elongated minaret shape would show up on the H-wave scan if its dispersion field was active. At least he hoped that was the case. If the field wasn’t active then the tower could be spotted in the visible spectrum and the mind control towers shape had been demonized as an effigy of evil over the last decade. Someone would have recognized and reported it. The only way the tower could be constructed in secret, and there was no better way to hide something so large, would be to generate a Tri-Lum dispersion field around it.
Each of the towers found on Earth, and further out in the galaxy during the Vendetta, was essentially a directional antenna array. The shape of the tower and its antenna was well known and without a cloak of secrecy, it would be almost impossible to construct one anywhere near a human population. Finding that distinctive shape would not be difficult, but finding it under a Tri-Lum field was a different story.
As Petty Officer Martes continued to cycle through the noise of the city, Cochrane began to focus his thought process on the problem, thinking like an intelligence officer instead of a knuckle dragger. The tower had to be someplace relatively secure or inaccessible and it had to have line of sight down into the trench.
“Check Power Dome-3,” Cochrane said.
The wreck spewed gouts of radiation into the atmosphere, but it fit the criteria. It was a perfect hiding place for a mind control tower if the radiation was managed. It was secluded, near the city, with ample construction materials that could be salvaged from the Zone. It was unclear how an array could get power, but it would probably be easy enough to tap into the energy grid that ran under the domes. The only question would be the intense radi
ation and if the Intruder could insulate himself from it. That seemed a daunting task.
Cochrane leaned closer to the display as the blurred image of the Avery Phelman's final resting place, the wreck of the Power Dome -3 appeared on the monitor. The domes reinforced isolation dome was fractured in several places, with a massive volcanic hole gouged in the center. Avery Phelman, had intended to strike a blow on the Emperor, but instead had driven the city’s inhabitants into the trenches below and planted the seeds of the bloody crackdown that followed.
The interior of the ruptured dome was beginning to fill up with the iron oxide grit of Mars, blown in to the dome’s interior every summer by the torrential winds. The readings from the fusion core were still hot. Nothing lived there and nothing ever would. The power of an unleashed star had that effect at close range.
Other power domes continued to operate around the periphery of the abandoned Habitation Domes, which were upwind from Power Dome 3. They were shielded and encased in composite panels, which isolated them from the radiation of the wreck. They fed power to the city below, warmed the Reserviour, and energized the magnetic lift rails of the idle Stratospire that sat like an unwanted black vine that had grown beyond any aesthetic value.
Cochrane picked out as much as he could in the haze of the image as Petty Officer Martes passed over the domes. Martes zoomed in to maximum and refocused the digital spectrum, decreasing the gain to attempt greater resolution. Once Martes was satisfied he had the best image possible, he began scanning the length of the derelict power dome, picking through each section. He focused on the exterior first, working his way past the radioactive interference of the center, then to the circumference of the edge.
The anticipation Cochrane felt faded as Martes passed each section without a positive result. Martes stopped at several points to clarify the fuzzy image, then moved along as he confirmed the innocence of each return.
