The End of All Things: The Third Instalment

by John Scalzi

  I looked back at the building—or more accurately, at the pile of rubble. Near the periphery of the rubble, under about a meter of concrete, our sniper was trying to push a pile of concrete and rebar off of him.

  “Come on,” I said.

  We reached the spot where the sniper was buried. Salcido trained his Empee on where the sniper’s head would be while Powell and Lambert and I pulled chunks of building away from the hidden shooter. After a minute, I pried off a final slab, clearing a shot for Salcido.

  “Jesus,” he said.

  Our sniper was fifteen standard years old at best and she was covered in blood from where the fallen concrete had creased her skull. I glanced through the rubble as best I could and saw her left arm pinned and her right leg going off in a direction it shouldn’t.

  “Get away from me,” she said, and her voice told me that at least one of her lungs had collapsed.

  “We can get you out of there,” I said.

  “Don’t want your help, green.”

  I was confused by this until I figured out she meant me, with my green skin. I looked back at Salcido and his Empee. “Put that down and help us.” He looked doubtful but did as he was told. I turned back to the sniper. “We’re not going to hurt you,” I said.

  “You brought a building down on me,” she wheezed.

  “That wasn’t our intent,” I said. I skipped over the part where our intent was to shoot her in the head the moment she gave us a chance. “We’ll get you out.”

  “No.”

  “You don’t want to die here,” I said.

  “I do,” she said. “This is where I lived. I lived here. And you destroyed it. Like you destroy everything.”

  “How are we doing?” I asked, not taking my eyes off the girl.

  “Almost there,” Powell said. Then she sent a message to me through her BrainPal. The chunk of concrete on her leg is the only thing keeping her from bleeding out, she said. If we move it, she dies. She’s dying anyway.

  “Okay,” I said. Call in for a medic, I said through the BrainPal.

  Why? Powell asked. You’re being awfully nice to someone who was just trying to kill you and who we were just trying to kill. She doesn’t even want our help. You should just let her die.

  I gave you an order, I said. Powell visibly shrugged.

  “We’re going to call for a medic,” I said, to the sniper.

  “I don’t want a medic,” she said, and her eyes closed. “I don’t want you. Why don’t you leave. This isn’t your planet. It’s ours. We don’t want you here. Leave. Just leave.”

  “It’s not that simple,” I said.

  The girl didn’t say anything. About a minute later she was dead.

  * * *

  “Well?” Lambert asked. He, Powell, and Salcido were waiting for me outside the security offices in Fushimi, where I had gone for a discussion—to use the word euphemistically—of the sniper incident.

  “I talked to Colonel Maxwell,” I said, naming the head of the CDF joint mission in Fushimi. “She tells me that it was the Kyotans who requested we drop the apartment building.”

  “Why would they want that? I thought we were working on the assumption they didn’t want that. Thus, all the sneaking up and trying not to destroy it on our part.”

  “The apartment block was apparently the local headquarters of the rebellion. Or more accurately, the local headquarters of the rebellion was in the apartment block.”

  “So the building was chock full of agitators,” Powell said.

  “Maxwell didn’t break down the ratio of agitators to normal humans,” I said. “And I didn’t get the impression from her that the Kyotan government much cared. They wanted to send a message.”

  “How many other people did we kill getting out the message?” Lambert asked.

  “None,” Salcido said, and looked at me. “Sorry, you asked me to find that out and I didn’t tell you because we got busy with other things. The Kyotan security forces did a sweep of the building a week ago and pulled everybody out. Block questioning and intimidation. That’s what started this whole set of riots we’re helping put down.”

  “So if they weren’t all rebels before, they probably are now,” Powell said.

  “You wanted to drop the building,” Lambert reminded her.

  “The building got dropped,” Powell reminded him. “Although Lambert’s right. If they were just going to drop the building, why the hell did they send us in?”

  “They sent us in before someone in the Kyoto security upper ranks remembered a CDF ship could level a building in a single shot, apparently,” I said.

  “We could have been killed.”

  “I guess they decided we were safe.”

  “That’s reassuring,” Powell said.

  “At least it wasn’t our idea,” Lambert said. “That girl hated us enough. And if she hated us, she had to have learned it from someone else.”

  “It wasn’t our idea, but one of our ships did the honors,” I said. “I don’t think that distinction would matter much to her or to anyone else. We’re on the hook for this as much as the Kyoto government.”

  “Did you get anything on the sniper?” Salcido asked me.

  “Rana Armijo. Sixteen standard. Parents apparently in deep with the rebellion. No sign of them. Either they’re gone or the Kyotans already have them.”

  “So she becomes a martyr for the rebellion,” Lambert said. “The government rounds up everyone in her apartment block, she stays behind, starts taking out security officers, and is so successful they have to drop the building on her head. It’s a good story.”

  “It won’t do her much good,” Powell said.

  “That’s how it’s supposed to work for martyrs.”

  “So what now?” Salcido asked.

  “We’re done here,” I said. “There’s ongoing rebel action in Sakyo and Yamashina, but the Tubingen has other orders. It’s someone else’s problem now.”

  “It was already someone else’s problem,” Lambert said. “Then we made it ours, too.”

  “Don’t start, Lambert,” Powell said. “It’s especially tiring today.”

  “If it’s tiring for you, think how it feels to them.”

  PART THREE

  A Thursday this time, and we’re called upon to manage a protest.

  “I’m not going to lie, I’m really curious to see these things in action,” Lambert said, as the hurricane funnels were set up around the Colonial Union administrative building in Kyiv.

  The administrative building itself was a skyscraper deposited in the center of a hectare of land in the downtown district. The entire hectare was a flat plaza, featureless except for a single piece of abstract sculpture. That sculpture was currently populated by several protesters, as was a large chunk of the plaza. The skyscraper was ringed by Kyiv policemen and CDF soldiers and hastily assembled metal barriers.

  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,” Lamber
t 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.
r />   * * *

  “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.”