NOVEL NEXT Chapter 72: General Strike I
The situation near the barricades was threatening to devolve into pure anarchy.
They arrived at the barricade two blocks away from the edge of Marlowe, blood-spattered and mildly perspiring, and stared wide-eyed at the throng that had all but occupied the entrance to Prilogia. Torchbeams swung madly in all directions, making a dazzling light-show of the swelling, pulsating crowd-mass pushing angrily against the bulwark of frantic policemen.
The members of Saltilla Police were spread out two rows deep before the shoulder-high barricade that separated them from the raging horde, and they had laced their arms together to form a human chain, their bodies flexing and heaving with the ebb and flow of that interminable tug of war.
Betelgeuse led Douglas and Voke down toward a clump of officers gathered around several dark-skinned bodies lying face down on the asphalt, the ground streaked with tiny tributaries of either grease or blood (it was impossible to tell in that flashing half-darkness).
As the trio edged closer to that grim-faced gathering, Betelgeuse observed the motionlessness of the dark-skins and thought that they were, quite possibly, dead, even though they exhibited quite a bit more wholeness compared to the dregs spattered all over the Underground Granary.
Betelgeuse picked out a tall and well-built man, a tail of graying hair just discernible under his helmet. 'This must be the commanding officer,' Betelgeuse mused, pursing his lips. The man's tan-colored face was craggy with the experience of violence, and his eyes bespoke a shrewd and cunning intelligence that, as they trained themselves upon the approaching TAF PLPs, seemed to parse Betelgeuse of all his hidden thoughts.
The man was large for a Desertian, but not so lopsided or over-muscled that an observer could say for sure that this was a White grade.
As Betelgeuse strode toward him, the other officers surrounding the tall man regained their feet and took on expressions that were alert and suspicious. But the tall man remained unperturbed, staring at them with dull amusement as they halted before him.
This guy is way too chill for being in the middle of a riot.
"PLP Corporal Sakar reporting," Betelgeuse said. "We were instructed here to help with the containment."
"Superintendent Connor-Dodges," the man smiled widely and amiably, stepping forward and proffering a hand that Betelgeuse accepted. It was a firm handshake. Tough and firm. "You're the first TAF here," he added, glancing back toward the barricade as he said this.
"What happened?" Voke said out loud, looking at the dark-skinned bodies on the street splayed out in various unnatural positions.
The Superintendent's attention focused on Voke, and he narrowed his eyes but otherwise did not respond.
"Identify yourself," Betelgeuse muttered, elbowing Voke hard in his side and causing him to yelp. Voke wheeled to face Superintendent Connor-Dodges, rubbing the nape of his neck sheepishly.
"PLP Thatcher, sir."
"An… uh… PLP McKay," Douglas chirped up beside them, strabismic eyes wobbling, assuming that they were all doing introductions.
"Well met," the Superintendent resumed his smile, eyeing the splotches of blood that conspicuously streaked the PLPs' vests and boots. "I see that you have had some action today."
"Not anything as troublesome as this," Betelgeuse returned. Shouts from the barricade; yells of pain and anger. Betelgeuse felt his heartbeat speed up. This thing didn't seem sustainable at all—what the hell was the Superintendent playing at?
"I take it they were what caused all this to happen?" Betelgeuse said, indicating the bodies and trying with limited success to suppress the alarm bells blaring within his head.
"Don't bother yourself with these poor sods. They were extremists, nothing more—"
An explosion interrupted the Superintendent mid-sentence, and every single person in the vicinity, save for the Superintendent himself, flinched violently. Betelguese jerked in the direction of that profusion of sound, his eyes widening to see a plume of flame rise orange-red into the air. It was coming from the far end, where the police barricade met a dilapidated and tottering warehouse that doubled up as the southeastern boundary of the Prilogia.
"Jesus!" Voke exclaimed, and Betelgeuse gripped his carbine with both his hands and checked that it was loaded.
Turmoil overtook them in a matter of seconds. The officers around the Superintendent hefted their weapons—stun batons, carbines—and sprinted toward the breach in the barricade, as a gaggle of protesters—not all of them dark-skins, Betelgeuse realized with a start—started to spill out into the main street, pouring out from the voluminous blaze billowing massy hillocks of smog into the air.
Smattering of gunfire. Screams consumed in an impossible deluge of sound.
"Sir—"
Ignoring Betelgeuse' attempts at getting his attention, the Superintendent hollered thunderously and raised his hand to indicate something to one of the policemen bound up in the human line not five meters away from them. That man extricated himself, stumbling with quiet panic across the pavement to halt before the Superintendent.
"Quickly!" the Superintendent yelled at him, indicating further back down the street to where two APCs were idling. "We need the compulsion-matrices now. No time to wait for the power magnifiers. GO!"
The policeman sprinted down the street. Betelgeuse scrunched up his face and took a half-step backward, his mind racing at a million miles per second to discern a path through all that confusion.
Compulsion? A mechanism for mass-compulsion? Sounds like collateral damage—are we in danger?
And his head snapped from side to side as he tried to get a good picture of the frontage. 'We'll be caught out in the open,' he thought, and he shouted incoherently to Voke and Douglas, trying to tell them that they should take cover.
The moil of protesters had by now formed a large and seething tumor on the main street. The policemen were tumbling over each other, eschewing their rifles for their stun-batons to avoid fratricide. Rumbling sounds issued from the APCs trundling down toward the fire-lit mob violence.
Blood in the air. Chaos.
"The APCs! The device—it's inside!" Betelgeuse yelled.
"What! What device!" Douglas roared back.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
"Speak clearly," Voke shouted, but his voice was lost to the confusion.
The ground was starting to fill up with as many fallen policemen as dying protesters, as the close-quarters melee raged on fast and furious. Knives clanged upon blacksteel vests, sabers of sharpened iron clashed with sparking batons, flesh was parted, faces were caved into skulls; the bedlam was overtaking the entire street, as the horde of enraged protesters began to engulf the panicking policemen like phagocytes on bacteria.
Betelgeuse yelled and snapped off several well-aimed shots, blasting through the torsos of several dark-skins that had broken from the main group to advance on them. They flopped, gurgling, to the ground, twitching and staring dumb askance at him. He twisted his head, trying to catch sight of the Superintendent but not seeing the large man anywhere.
'Can't fucking trust these backstabbing shitstains!' he seethed internally.
"We gotta go," Douglas hissed, slapping Voke and Betelgeuse on the back of their vests. It was clear to them that the tide had completely turned. The remaining policemen were struggling heroically, and Betelgeuse could see one in particular tear through the protesters with nigh superhuman strength; a vial was smashed into that stern-faced man's helmet, splashing his face with a liquid chemical that seared his flesh, and as his eyes bubbled out of his sockets he screamed and fell to the floor, struggling pitifully as he became enveloped in that dark and angry crush.
The PLPs turned and ran, tearing across the street to the apartment complex opposite. They found themselves before a locked gate, and Douglas smashed it open with one powerful kick of his blood-streaked boot, the iron bolt erupting in a spew of of dust from its concrete housing.
Wasting no time, they tumbled into the private porch and took cover behind a concrete column. Betelgeuse arched his neck out to his right, peering between concrete balusters to find several protesters holding up limbs and heads and screaming black insanity at the looming APCs.
The compulsion-matrix! Here it comes!
The dark pulse of the compulsion began to overtake Betelgeuse, and he gritted his teeth, readying himself for its full force. Speakers screamed feedback, then shrieked to life in the background, and then a sudden and incongruous silence seemed to suffuse the whole space.
"YOU ARE CURRENTLY IN VIOLATION OF MARTIAL LAW REGULATIONS TWO-EIGHT-TWO-FIVE. LAY DOWN YOUR WEAPONS. LAY DOWN YOUR WEAPONS. LAY DOWN YOUR WEAPONS."
The droning voice smashed into Betelgeuse' perceptual faculties like a sledgehammer, causing his vision to reel and his Incunabulum to pulse madly against his chest.
"LAY DOWN YOUR WEAPONS."
Remembering the mental technique he had utilized to defend against Salleh, he formed his intentionality into a shield and braced, attempting with all his might to stymie the usurpation of his will.
"LAY DOWN YOUR WEAPONS."
Douglas and Voke had already complied, unslinging their weapons and then placing their carbines upon the ground, their eyes glazed and unseeing. Betelgeuse could see between the balusters the mob arrayed in that wide street, eerily calm, their savagery arrested.
"LAY DOWN YOUR WEAPONS."
'I'm at an advantage here,' Betelgeuse thought, 'since I'm behind cover.'
Furthermore, this implementation of the compulsion-matrix is untargeted and unfocused. My will cannot be overborne by attacks of this level.
But still, to think that such technology exists—could it have been an import from the Democracy? I've never seen or heard anything like it!
If facilities for mechanical compulsion exists, then why haven't they used it on a mass scale, to cover the whole city? Is there a resource constraint?
"LAY DOWN YOUR—"
Before Betelgeuse could muster his intentionality to break Douglas and Voke free of their mental bindings, the droning voice abruptly cut, substituted for a horrible crashing sound that resounded across the square.
The pressure lifted. Betelgeuse' head shot up to see the APCs being set upon by shadowy figures that appeared to flit in and out of existence. They moved like they were walking on air, gliding up with exceptional grace to perch atop those smoking carapaces. Flames were raging behind those figures, consuming buildings and bodies alike; yet it seemed as though all the hundred sextillion photons thrown up by the inferno avoided the curiously dark and difficult-to-discern humanoids.
'What the hell are those!?' Betelgeuse thought with a mixture of alarm and confusion. He observed those formidable creatures carefully, saw them shift their weight as the APCs bucked toward the stunned protesters to grind a large swathe of them into the ground.
Now that the artificial compulsion-matrices had been disabled by those figures—exactly how they did that, he still wasn't certain—his will itched to feel the contours of their intentionality, to probe at their Incunabula and bring them under his control…
But he knew it was suicide. They were possessed of a power outside his knowledge and had shrugged off what even he had struggled to withstand. He suppressed his will, disturbed to perceive its unruliness. It was the first time the thought had occurred to him that, perhaps, his will might not be his own… and that thought frightened him.
He shook his head free of the cobwebs. He'd deal with that later.
Voke and Douglas.
Betelgeuse shook both of them free of the remnants of the compulsion, his eyes following the silhouettes of the figures. There were two of them, one to each APC.
And they raised weapons Betelgeuse had not noticed they were carrying and shot out the tinted windows. The APCs swerved and crashed one into the other; then the figures lobbed what must have been grenades into the cracked windows, before flitting away to rejoin the rousing mass of protesters—most of them dark-skins, some of them quite a bit lighter than that.
"We have to get away. The police are done," Betelgeuse muttered to himself, as Douglas and Voke blinked themselves out of the stupor.
An eruption of sound. Orange light flaring then fading. The ground trembled with the force of the explosions.
"—Shit, again?—"
"Shut," Betelgeuse hissed, grabbing onto his companions by their vests and dragging them across the porch.
They escaped down the road, running until the commotion receded and silence reasserted itself. The Saltillan sky was tinged a strange rust-red ochre as dusk gradually gave way to the wanness of early-morning.
Betelgeuse was left trying to explain to an overborne Cacliocos over transceiver the absolute shit-show that was the Saltilla Police's attempt at containing the Amalgamated Union riot, when they stumbled straight into him and the others in his section—Privates Misha Kern and the inimitable Smit, as well as two new faces (one male and one female) Betelgeuse did not recognize—rushing down the opposite way.
Cacliocos was patrolling TTDI just down the street from Marlowe. It makes sense for him to be the first one here.
Cacliocos' expression was, naturally, less than pleased.
"Sakar!" Cacliocos bellowed, even before Betelgeuse could salute, "What do you mean the police have been overrun!?"
"Exactly what I mean!" Betelgeuse shot back vociferously. "The Union protesters got their hands on some explosives and breached the barricade. There could be hundreds of them coming down this way, sir!"
Cacliocos fell silent. Betelgeuse could see rivulets of sweat drain down his face.
"... What would you advise?"
"I recommend a tactical retreat!" Betelgeuse snapped, at which Douglas and Voke nodded vehemently. Behind Cacliocos, the dark-eyed Misha flared her nostrils and glanced toward the grimacing Smit, though what passed between them Betelgeuse could only guess.
"What of the survivors? We have to check!" Cacliocos said.
"There are no survivors. The protesters were killing them, sir!"
"Bludgeoned to death!" Douglas echoed.
"... Then who are they?" Cacliocos asked, pointing behind the PLPs.
Betelgeuse wheeled and felt his blood run cold.
It's them.
The two figures were racing toward them at an incredible speed, their contours melting away into static and their cloaks billowing in a breeze that Betelgeuse could not feel.