Chapter 17

DAY 37 – HADES – PETROVA

“Are you feeling alright, Val?” Fran asked as she walked along beside Petrova. “You seem ... subdued today.”

“She’s probably just worried about the protest,” Sam replied, his homemade high-vis flag whipping in the wind as he waved it above his head. “Don’t worry, Val – it’ll be alright.”

They had to raise their voices over the sound of the crowd that surrounded them, the throngs of civilians clad in their leather shawls and jackets slowly making their way along the street, boxed in by the rows of pale prefabs. It was hard to tell anyone apart with the protective masks and rebreathers they wore, their eyes concealed beneath dark visors and goggles, their footsteps kicking up a haze of obscuring sand. Every one of them had some manner of high-vis clothing. Some sported their work vests, others sashes, and some wore the armbands favored by the insurgents. It was increasingly obvious that a non-negligible number of protesters were attending in open support of the enemy. Like her companions, many had made flags, while some had brought signs and banners decrying the recent rationing and martial law.

Petrova was surprised by how many Hadeans were attending. There must have been several thousand people who had formed a column together, filtering in from side streets until they merged into a solid mass, like some ancient army marching to war in formation. They had started on the outskirts of the city, accumulating more protesters as they went, filling one of the main roads that led towards the city center.

This was just one of many such columns. Tens of thousands of workers were slowly making their way inward, intending to coalesce at the main square in front of the city hall. It would be a truly enormous crowd, and even with the entire colony’s PDF deployed to control it, Petrova had her concerns. It had to be ten percent of the colony’s population, if not more.

As they walked along the dusty street, she lifted her head, watching surveillance drones hover above the column through her tinted visor like vultures floating on the wind. The protest had been scheduled for a day when there was a lull in the storms and the sky was temporarily clear. Hopefully, that might discourage the insurgents from making some kind of play. Either way, Barbosa hadn’t been coy about his plans to put an end to the colony’s disorder.

“I’m fine,” Petrova finally replied, evading Fran’s question. “I just didn’t sleep very well last night.”

“Maybe you should have stayed home,” Carl added, adjusting his grip on the broom handle that supported his sign. “Don’t worry – I doubt that we’ll be spending all day out here. It’s too damned hot, for one.”

Petrova turned her gaze forward, seeing the sea of flags and signs stretching ahead of her, the tether rising up into the sky in the distance like a thin strand of black cable. As they made their way along, her trained eye began to pick out more PDF. They had set up blockades to section off some of the larger side roads, ensuring that everyone was being funneled in the same direction, redirecting the crowd. They had erected concrete barriers and had parked their APCs longways across the roads to cut them off, watching silently through their opaque visors, the rows of riot control troopers standing idle with their shields lowered.

After her prior experience with the PDF, she was wary of them now. It remained to be seen if Roach and Crow could maintain order in the ranks – or if they even cared to. With Hoff gone, they would be overseeing security at this event, and it was a terrible thing to be missing Hoff’s more delicate touch.

“You reckon they’ll have any snack trucks at the square?” Sam asked.

“Not with the rationing the way it is,” Fran scoffed. “Besides, we probably won’t even get to see the square today. There are so many people attending that the crowd is expected to spill out into the surrounding blocks.”

A group of people who knew her companions from the factory worked their way through the crowd to greet them, Petrova letting their conversation fade into the background noise. Petrova’s answer hadn’t been a complete lie – she was still wrestling with the news of Tom’s death, and she hadn’t gotten much sleep the night before. After burning herself out emotionally, she was left feeling hollow and exhausted, like she had run some kind of marathon. It was a kind of tired that transcended the physical. At least the worst of it was over, and she could take her mind off it now.

It was a long, hot march to the city center, the hypergiant star beating down on them between the scant areas of shade. Petrova always knew where she was, both the position and apparent size of the anchor giving her a very good idea of her location relative to it. More permanent structures joined it as they neared, rising up above the ocean of prefabs. There was the courthouse, the hospital, and the old corporate headquarters. The city hall was situated in front of the square – little more than a block of carbcrete with windows.

Below, the square was already packed with a seething mass of protesters, the obelisk at its center rising high above their heads. Petrova was so far away that she could barely read their signs, and the great monument was small enough that she could have covered it with her finger. There was a cordon set up in front of the building’s steps made up of the same concrete barriers and parked trucks she had seen on the way, a row of riot police three men deep keeping the civilians at a safe distance. There were plenty of sandbags too – a plentiful resource on Hades. Everything seemed peaceful for the moment, though she could spot a few sniper teams perched on the nearby rooftops – likely just a precaution.

The crowd she was a part of was already stopping, the protest overflowing deep into the surrounding streets as Fran had anticipated. She could make out a PDF cordon ahead of them preventing the group from joining with those inside the square, and managing the flow of the crowd. They were in position to form a kettle, too, which would stop the protesters from leaving if arrests were to be made. There was the roar of an engine, and she looked up again to see a dropship coasting overhead, flying low over the city. She noted that its tail gun was deployed. That rotary railgun was only intended to protect a Leadbeater’s crew during disembarkation, but it could be used for rudimentary CAS in a pinch.

She glanced at the tightly-packed people who surrounded her, scarcely able to see a handful of exposed faces. Common crowd control tactics would involve plainclothes officers hiding among the protesters, ready to record crimes or leap out and arrest perpetrators if necessary. For all she knew, there could be an agent to her left and an insurgent to her right – she had no way to tell.

“Aw, are we stopping here?” Sam complained as he stood on his toes to get a look over the throngs. “I was hoping we’d at least get to march through the square.”

“Looks like they ran out of space,” Fran mused. “It’s a good turnout – that’s for sure.”

“How’s the Governor gonna know that we’re mad if he can’t see us?” Sam asked.

“I think he’ll get the gist of it,” Carl chuckled.

“So, what do we do now?” Sam mused. “I’ve never been to a protest before.”

“This is the part where we stand around holding signs for a few hours,” Fran replied. “Maybe do a little chanting.”

“I wonder how the Navy is going to respond,” Carl added. “They seem to think there’s some military need to produce weapons, so if those workers go on strike, can they force them back on the line against their will? Is there a law about that?”

“Ideally, we won’t have to test that theory,” Fran replied. “I think that once they see how many people are out demonstrating, and how willing the unions are to strike, they’ll rethink their tactics.”

“Even if they’re being controlled by secret black ops groups?” Petrova asked dryly.

“Well, they can’t arrest the whole colony,” Fran replied with a shrug.

Petrova grumbled to herself, leaning around the man in front of her to get a look at what was happening. She couldn’t search for the damned Rask if she was confined to this spot for the whole duration of the protest. Perhaps she could find an excuse to slip away, but that would leave her friends vulnerable. No, not her friends. Val’s friends – friends of an imagined person. Still, the thought of something happening to them the way it had to Tom...

She couldn’t think about that right now, turning her attention instead to the crowd and the movements of the PDF.

A couple of hours had passed, and the sun had changed position, low enough now to create some shade from the prefabs. All in all, the protest seemed to have gone off rather well. Petrova and her companions hadn’t moved very far from their original position, with most of the civilians in attendance milling about in the street, forming little groups and occasionally waving flags and signs around. A few more people had been permitted through the cordon and into the square as the morning had gone on, but it seemed like things were winding down, with the less dedicated of the crowd slowly filtering away. There had been a lot of shouting through megaphones from the direction of the square – it seemed that some of the union higher-ups were giving speeches – but she had been too far away to hear much of it.

A kind woman had emerged from one of the prefabs to offer them water, and they were sitting in the shadow of her prefab now, drinking from the reusable bottles. Petrova took a sip, then replaced her rebreather, quickly fastening the cap before the dust found its way inside.

“Well, I feel like I’ve protested enough for one day,” Carl said as he stretched his arms above his head. “My civic duty has been fulfilled.”

“All you did was wave a vest around for two hours,” Fran chuckled from her seat on the metal steps beside him.

“Like I said – civic duty fulfilled.”

“Maybe we should stick around a little longer,” Petrova added hurriedly.

“I thought you didn’t even want to come?” Sam asked, his eyebrow cocked above his goggles.

“I forgot that a friend from work was supposed to be here somewhere,” she replied, rising to her feet and brushing off some of the dust that had settled on her. “If you guys want to head home, I might see if I can find them before it’s all over.”

Before they could ask more questions, they were interrupted by the far-off sound of a gunshot. Petrova was up and alert before her companions even had time to react, all of the high-spirited conversations from the nearby protesters falling eerily silent as the sound echoed across the colony. It was quickly joined by bursts of automatic fire – there was a gunfight happening somewhere. A distant blast rocked the city, the civilians who were packed into the street all ducking in tandem as it washed over them, more following almost like firecrackers going off in sequence. The noise was coming from all around now, bleeding in from every direction, as though the entire planet had suddenly erupted into war. Was this an insurgent attack, or was it part of the Commander’s plan?

“What the hell’s going on?” Carl demanded, covering his ears and flinching as another loud blast rocked them. Petrova could feel the pressure wave from this one – it was closer, her aural implants dulling the sound to protect her hearing. On the horizon, she could already see plumes of smoke starting to rise like dark pillars, the blasts kicking up columns of dust into the blue sky.

The shocked silence turned to panic, and the crowd started to move, their confusion and fear immediately infectious. Fearing a stampede, Petrova gripped Sam and Carl by the wrists, pulling them into an alley between the nearest prefabs as Fran followed behind her. Petrova put her back to the hard metal, looking out into the street, watching groups of frightened people rush past. Where were they even going? Chaos was erupting all around them.

Petrova pulled out her phone, intending to contact the carrier, but the display showed a no connection symbol. Realizing what she was doing, Fran pulled out her phone too, her brow furrowing when she looked at the display.

“Do any of you have a signal?” Fran asked, prompting Sam and Carl to do the same.

“Satellite and intranet are both down,” Carl replied with a look of confusion that was apparent even beneath his mask. “I can’t get a connection to anything.”

There was nothing confusing about it to Petrova – civilian comms were likely being jammed to prevent the insurgents from coordinating. They had probably shut down the wireless broadcast towers and were using the EWAR Courser to saturate the satellites. Only military-grade comms would be up and running, which she didn’t have access to. There was nothing special about the phone she was using.

“Is this the resistance or the Navy?” Sam demanded, glancing at his friends with wide eyes as he rubbed his wrist.

“Doesn’t matter,” Fran replied sternly. “We have to get off the streets – we have to find somewhere safe. Val? Val, are you alright?”

Petrova was frozen with indecision, torn between her two duties. Her mission was to find and kill the Rask, and he would certainly be participating if this was indeed the opening salvo of an insurgent operation. On the other hand, the city was erupting into full-blown war, and her friends were stuck in the middle of it. Val’s friends – whatever. They were civilians, and her duty was to protect them. Maybe she could get them to safety before departing in search of her target.

“Val, just breathe,” Fran said as she placed a reassuring hand on her shoulder. She was mistaking Petrova’s indecision for shock. “We’ll head back the way we came – it’ll be alright.”

“No,” Petrova replied, coming to a decision. “We’ll take the back roads. I remember where the PDF checkpoints were, and we need to avoid them.”

“Huh?” Sam asked, giving her a bewildered look.

“Stay close to me and do exactly as I say,” she added. “We need to get as far away from the square as we can.”

Another explosion shook the prefabs on their outriggers, all three of Petrova’s wards ducking reflexively once more. Petrova lifted her eyes to the sky as a dropship did an alarmingly low pass above the rooftops, its thrusters flaring to hold it aloft as it banked around, coming to a hover. The gun beneath its tail spun up, spraying a stream of slugs at something on the ground that was out of view from her perspective.

“Do as she says!” Fran added, looking at Petrova with something that might be concern or distrust.