“They keep coming. And that makes them all potential vectors to spread the virus even quicker. Veta’s been on the hook with the locals trying to explain that, and they sent some deputy mayor to try and tell them to disburse, but he got shouted down pretty quick, and he left. Now, we’ve got those three sterling examples of Lorton-Delos police to control the crowd.”
The three police were huddled together, as if for mutual support, and off to the side. Esther had no false feeling of confidence that they would react if the crowd erupted.
“Well, I think I’ve got it now. Why don’t you get some shut-eye.”
Esther took one more quick look around, then nodded and said, “OK, you’ve got it. Wake me if anything happens.”
She left the gate, but made a detour back into the lab. Gene was still at his station—he might not have even moved from his seat since Esther was last inside.
“Any progress?”
Gene looked up, rubbed his eyes, and said, “Don’t know. We’ve started programming the anti-viral, but that all depends on the sequencing. If that doesn’t give us what we need, it’s back to the drawing board.”
“How long is that going to take?”
“Another three hours or so. Maybe a bit more.”
Gene looked horrible, and Esther was going to suggest he get some sleep as well. If the sequencing or whatever was going to take more time before they could start on the anti-viral, then he’d be better off getting some rest so he could function. Looking around the lab, she expected most of them could use some sleep as well, but that was Bing’s call, not hers.
“Is it still bad out there?” he asked her.
“More come every hour.”
“You can’t let anything interrupt the sequencing. A power surge or drop, and we’ll have lost ten hours and need to start from scratch again.”
The power for the compound was internal. The small fusion generator was pretty much foolproof, and with the switch locked, it would take a significant effort to turn it off. The power lines that transported the electricity to the lab, however, would be a vulnerability. If someone was intent on shutting down the lab, all they would have to do would be to sever the lines.
Ah, shit.
The cot in the lounge was a siren call, trying to suck her into Morpheus’ embrace, but Esther hadn’t considered the power. She knew she had to bring that up with Jim. She thanked Gene, then headed back to the gate.
“That was a short four hours,” Jim noted as she walked up.
“Yeah, I know. But we need to make sure the power to the lab isn’t cut.”
“They’re not going to be able to take down the generator, not unless they’re hiding some pretty big pieces of equipment out there.”
“They don’t have to. All they have to do is find the cable and cut it.”
She could see realization dawn over his face as he said “Ah, shit!”
“That was my exact reaction when Gene brought it to my attention.”
“So, what do we do? We can’t very well dig it up to put bigger conduits around it.”
“No, but we’ve got to keep it in mind if there’s a breach. That’s our Maginot Line.”
“And the German’s bypassed that.”
“OK, bad analogy. How about Horatius at the Bridge?”
“Better, and I get it. Let me talk it over with Paul and see what we can come up with.”
“OK, and now I really need to get some sleep.”
“Sweet dreams.”
“Yeah, right. I’m just sure,” she said.
Halfway to the lounge, Michelle met her coming from her own nap. Esther stopped her and briefed her on the power issue. Just as Michelle said she understood, a roar sounded from the crowd.
“What now?” Esther said.
The mass of people, who had been standing a good 20 or 30 meters away from the compound, had suddenly rushed forward and were right at the fence, peering inside and yelling.
Esther turned around, wondering what had set them off, and behind Ward 2, someone was trundling not one, not two, but three bodies, all stacked on top of each other, on the gurney, heading to the incinerator.
“Holy Mother of God!” Esther shouted. “I told Bing to hold off on any burning!”
She and Michelle bolted for the gate, her weariness washed away in the surge of adrenaline.
Jim, Paul, and three more of the security team, were lined up, almost shoulder to shoulder, at the gate. The crowd was pushing on the fence, though. If they broke through, and they could if they had it in their mind, it would be somewhere along the fence line, not at the gate.
“See what they’re doing?” an amplified voice echoed over the heads of the mob. “They’re murdering us, right there.”
“Bing, we’ve got a situation. Lock the wards and the labs,” she passed.
“How bad?”
“We might get overrun.”
“Keep them away from the lab. We need three more hours at a minimum if we’re going to start on the anti-virals.”
Easy for you to say.
“We’ll try. No one goes out of the buildings until I give the all-clear.”
The amplified voice kept up the litany of sins the Federation was imposing on the people of the planet, and the mob was eating it up. They started pushing in unison on the fence making the entire thing sway.
“I’m getting the M99’s,” she told Michelle. “Get ready.”
Michelle grabbed Esther by the upper arm, stopping her.
“You can’t.”
“What do you mean, I can’t? This is a life and death situation.”
“I know, but it’s in our charter. No deadly force.”
“Better to kill a few if we can save thousands, hell, millions. Bing needs to finish the sequencing.”
Esther was not inured to death, and she hoped she never would be, but she also understood that sometimes lives were sacrificed for the greater good. This had to be one of those times.
“I know, but we can’t.”
“But you gave me four names, including you, who can handle a weapon.”
“And that was a mistake. I let you push me, and I can’t any more. We cannot use deadly force.”
Esther was shocked, and she was about to tell her to blow sand, that she and Jim would use the 99’s, but the look on Michelle’s face, both hopeful and determined, gave her pause. She shifted her gaze to the people pushing on the fence, and she realized that Michelle was right. Not just because of F-AID regulations, but because the Federation was there to help the people, not kill them. They were part of her responsibility, just as much as the team itself.
OK, maybe not as much as the team, but I’m still responsible for their safety.
“So, what are we going to do?”
“Our best. And nothing says we can’t crack a few heads,” Michelle said.
Esther started pulling ideas out of the air. Marines were trained to kill, not to merely restrain, so she didn’t have some pat procedure she could pull up. The obvious thing was the memory wire, which would slow anyone down. But it was still attached to the fence, and the moment she tried to free it, the crowd would understand exactly what would happen.
What about a barricade? she thought, looking back into the compound for what she could cobble together.
There wouldn’t be enough to cover the perimeter, but she could give up real estate to possibly set up a defensive perimeter around the lab and the generator. Maybe the mob would be happy with trashing the out-buildings and leaving a more heavily fortified lab alone.
“Veta, get your personnel into the lab,” she passed.
The doctor didn’t argue, but only asked, “What about the patients?”
“Your call. But I think they’d be safe if left in the wards. The mob is angry at us, not them.”
“How many super-skunks do we have?” she asked Michelle as she scanned for things she could use as a line of defense—when she saw it.
“Twenty-three—” Michelle started when
Esther waved her silent.
“Paul had construction experience, right?”
“Well, yes, before he joined the agency.”
“Send him to me. You do whatever you can to slow them down, because they’re coming, one way or the other.”
She spun around and sprinted to where Erik had left his equipment beside Ward 2. She was poring over the foamcrete dispenser when Paul came running up, breathing heavily.
“Is this the catalyst to break up the foamcrete or the foamcrete itself?”
Paul took a look, then said, “The cat.”
“I need foamcrete! Can you switch it?”
“Uh, yeah, if they have some. Let me look.”
Esther waited impatiently and Paul rummaged through the supplies. Behind her, the mob was in action. There was a concerted effort to push down the fence, and it was swaying a good two or three meters on either side of center now. She was surprised that no one had used a truck to simply blast through, although the simple mass of bodies in the way probably explained that.
“I’ve got it!” Paul shouted, pushing some compressed tanks forward.
“Get it hooked up, and now.”
“They don’t hook up. We just refill.”
“I don’t care what you call it, just get the foamcrete in the dispenser thing. And hurry.”
While Paul was refilling the dispenser, she examined the wands. They looked pretty straight-forward. There was a lever to open the flow, then a trigger to shoot it out. From what she’d seen during the setup, the foamcrete shot out about five meters.
“OK, done!” Paul shouted. “Now what?”
“Now, we move this thing by the lab.”
The dispenser probably massed 300 kilos, and the two got behind it and started pushing. It was on a set of four wheels, but the dirt ground was not the best surface. It took some effort from the both of them. There was a crash from up by the gate, but Esther didn’t raise her head. She had to trust Jim and Michelle to take care of whatever happened.
The PPE, while better and more comfortable than and EVAS suit of a PICS, was still hindering her, and the sweat was building up.
“Wait,” she said, then quickly shed it.
She didn’t think success would come down to being protected from the virus or not, and she was much more mobile without the PPE.
In just her Marine Corps gym shorts and a Globe and Laurel Tavern t-shirt, she said, “OK, let’s go.”
Up ahead, she could see people starting to clamber over a portion of the fence that had been knocked almost to the ground. There were puffs of mist as the first of the super-skunk detonated, and people scattered, but not all to the rear. Some pushed forward, only to be met by Jim and two others. Esther could see blows being landed, but it was hard to tell who was coming out on top.
“Keep them off my ass for a few more minutes,” she said as she grunted pushing the dispenser. Finally, she stopped it about over where she thought the power cable ran, then had Paul help her strap the wand harness on her back.
“Now what?” Paul asked.
“Now, we stop anyone coming at us.”
“With the foamcrete?”
“Yeah, with the foamcrete.”
“Awesome! I’ve always wanted to do that,” he said, shedding his PPE as well and harnessing up.
“You take the rear, I’ll take the front.”
The two of them, with a single dispenser, could not cover the entire lab and generator station. But there were no entrances into the lab except for the front door. Expeditionary building or not, it was quite secure, and it would take some powerful tools to break through. All Esther and Paul had to do would be to keep the mob from the power cable and the door. Nothing else mattered.
She gave the trigger a little squeeze and was rewarded with a small stream of foamcrete which hit the ground and immediately started to expand.
“Keep the stream low. Too high and the wind can scatter some of it before it solidifies,” Paul told her.
Up ahead, a second section of the fence came crashing down, and more people started pouring in. Two of Michelle’s team rushed to meet them, but were immediately bowled over. She had a clear view of Jim, and the man was a berserker. Esther would never have guessed he was a brawler, given his runner’s frame, but he looked to be giving much more than he was receiving.
Esther saw Michelle go down, but then the mass of people from the second breach streamed into the compound and rushed towards the lab.
“That’s where they’re doing the experiments,” one man shouted, pointing.
He was ignoring Esther, though as he led a group of half-a-dozen to the lab. She was surprised that they didn’t even give her a second glance, but that was to her advantage. With a steady stream of foamcrete, she hit the ground at their feet. There were shouts of confusion, and the men and women started to struggle for a step or two before it expanded and hardened. Their cries of anger turned to confusion, then anger again as they realized what had happened.
It works! she thought as she felt a tiny burst of achievement.
“Get her!” the first man shouted, waving his arm and pointing. “Hector, over here, get that bitch!”
Five men and two women—probably including Hector—rushed Esther. But she triggered the wand and sprayed them, going a little higher than the first time. It didn’t matter. The foamcrete hit them, and seconds later, they were trapped, cursing and screaming at her.
“What’s the situation out there?” Bing asked over the comms. “We can hear shouting.”
“We’ve been breached. You stay locked inside and keep working,” she answered as she let out another stream at a woman who’d tried to sneak in from the side, a piece of lumber in her hand.
Once she realized she was stuck, she hurled the wood at Esther, but with her feet in an odd position, she couldn’t get anything on it, and the chunk of wood fell short.
Behind her, Esther could hear the splat of Paul’s wand, but she didn’t waste a glance. There were 20-25 people in front of her, trying to figure out what do.
“Come on, just rush her,” the first man she hit egged the others on. “What can she do? Look, I’m fine. I’m not hurt.”
“Who’s next,” Esther shouted out with heartfelt bravado. “Step on up.”
The group looked from Esther to the man, who continued to harangue them. Finally, the damn broke, and they spread out to rush her en masse.
“Get her, get her!” the first man yelled as Esther started sweeping her wand.
The first pass made people duck, but she didn’t get enough on most of them to stop them. She had to slow down and concentrate the stream. She depressed the trigger all the way, making a slow, low sweep that trapped a good fifteen of them. One young man, barely more than a boy, stumbled as his feet hit the foamcrete and fell face-down, to be covered by the expanding foam. Erik had told her the safety valves in the foamcrete would keep it from adhering to a person, but she wasn’t sure what would happen if someone was encased.
One of the men trapped to her right managed to pull his leg free, leaving his shoe behind. He lunged at her, too closed to be foamed, but Esther was not helpless. Without thinking, she swung the wand’s handle up in a wicked uppercut, connecting solidly with the man’s jaw and dropping him.
“Come on, what are you waiting for?” she shouted. “It just two of us here and how many of you?”
A group of at least 30 people was in front of Ward 1, chanting while four men were smashing the door with what looked to be part of the scanner that had been at the gate. The door gave way, and the people disappeared inside. Other people were wandering around, almost as if they were playing tourist, while several were taking selfies with the ruined gate as a backdrop. But surrounding her and Paul were at least fifty people, all talking over each other as they tried to figure out what to do. With one firm leader, they could have rushed the two, but mobs rarely had that, and too many people, including the first guy who was encased up to his right knee, wanted to be in charg
e.
Esther risked a glance back. She had another ten meters of slack hose connecting her wand to the dispenser. Marines always preferred to be on the offense rather the defense, so with her best battle cry, she charged forward, jumping up on chunks of hardened foamcrete and past the grasping arms of a trapped man. The mob surged back, but not fast enough. Three people fell to their backs as Esther foamed them, trapping six people like flies in amber before the rest were able to dart out of range.
“Sergei’s in there,” a woman screamed, rushing forward to kneel where a knee was sticking out of the foamcrete. She started pulling at it with her bare hands. Esther let her be.
She retreated to her position when a thought struck her.
“How much more of this stuff do we have.” she whispered into her mic.
“We’re at 92%. You know, maybe we should just cover up the ground over the cable. That would stop them,” Paul said.
Esther considered it for a moment, then said, “No, they’ve broken into Ward 1, so they could get into the lab, too.”
She shot a stream at a man who’d been sidling around her, missing him, but making him retreat. Someone else threw a rock at her, but she was able to twist so it missed her. If they started with smaller rocks that they could fling at her with some oomph on them, she knew they’d start connecting. Once again, she was glad this was a mob instead of an organized group—at least for the moment.
For several minutes, they were at a standoff. Several of the group gathered to discuss the situation while the rest kept up a litany of threats, cat calls, and pleadings. Esther ignored them, focusing on the ones in the discussion. When they broke up, she knew something was coming. The core group of about a dozen spread out covering the gap between the lab and the generator.
“They’re getting smarter,” she whispered into her mic.
“Turn your aperture to the right. That’ll give you a wider spray,” Paul told her.
She started to comply, then held off. When they started their move, she’d try for a couple of longer sprays before switching to wide. She didn’t have long to wait. As soon as the middle-aged man in the blue shirt opened his mouth, Esther darted forward and nailed him with a shot to the hips. He fell with the extra weight dragging him, but he managed to shout out to charge her.
Esther's Story: Special Duty (The United Federation Marine Corps' Lysander Twins Book 4) Page 21