Chapter 45 – The Easy Way Is Mined
Around ten-thirty in the morning, First Sergeant King moved into the central stadium, followed by Splitter and Sorpresa. This was, at one time, definitely the right place. Now, however, it was abandoned, only blood, trash and corpses remained. Governor Maime's head stood next to Dr. Mallus's on stakes near the center of the field.
On the monitors, Ashley was still organizing their defense. Several hours old, the broadcast was a perfect distraction. Sergeant King watched as Ashley spoke to some of the kids on the monitors overhead. In the background the prisoners huddled on the field.
In reality, however, the killing was over and had been for some time. The orphans had played them all.
King directed Splitter and Sorpresa to the rooftop access door. They flew over the stands and exited the stadium.
Outside on the rooftop Corporal Sorpresa pulled off his mask and vomited for the second time that morning.
First Sergeant King radioed Captain Snow. "Ma'am, we have a problem.”
Hovering above the crowd of teens and adults at God's Hotel, Snow replied, "Only one?”
"The stream was delayed by a couple hours at least. It's a mess in there.”
Sorpresa threw up again, loud, wet and meaty.
"We're going to need a minute before we're airborne,” King said.
"Copy, First Sergeant.”
Splitter interrupted, "Ma'am, permission to speak?”
"Go," Captain Snow answered.
"We need to redistribute the charges!” Splitter exclaimed.
"Say again?”
"We should sink this shithole! They have to pay for what they did! Those were citizens!" Splitter sounded angry and irrational.
"Sergeant, we're talking about children here.”
"They're savages, animals, all of them! This place is a cancer! Senator Miller is right. We should burn it off the face of the earth. That girl especially.”
The Staff Sergeant advanced on King. "We can't let them do this.”
"They did it. It can't be undone," King said.
"We can't let them get away with it," Splitter argued. "We can't just let them sail out to high water. This is bullshit! I swear to god, I'm not letting them get away with this!" Splitter gestured with his rifle. More than once he'd pointed it directly at First Sergeant King.
King looked at Splitter and made a decision. "You're right, okay. You're right. Here's what we're going to do.”
King walked over to the woozy Sorpresa. He shook him by the shoulder. "Can you fly?”
Sorpresa nodded.
"Get your mask on." King triggered his comm-set "Captain, we're moving. Splitter's right, this is something we have to take care of now.”
"Say again, Sergeant," Captain Snow ordered.
"We're coming to you, Captain. I think we should meet in the security wing, get ourselves squared away.”
The soldiers heard her exasperated sigh, "Copy, Sergeant.”
Sorpresa turned and stepped off the rooftop. King and Splitter followed, with King taking the lead. They sailed toward the rooftop of God's Hotel.
Onscreen Ashley directed hundreds of orphans in preparing for the imminent police attack. In a nod to Drews, and a deft consolidation of power, Ashley had commissioned the gang leaders as her generals.
There were tons of things that needed doing and tons of kids who needed things to do. Whatever she didn't handle personally, Big Chris or Drews took over for her.
Kazimov and Hambone, with Jones, Rudy and Taylor, were occupied with the car keys. They handed out keys and radios to the four man fire teams. Using the radios, the teens were able to find the correct cars for the corresponding keys with an astounding lack of difficulty. Before long, groups of armed orphans had been assigned to the necessary posts, relative to their specific cars.
The police, deceived by the false broadcast, believed the children were still in the stadium. It also seemed likely that they intended to kill the hostages. Mayor Westbury’s hackers disabled the crisis box and he gave the command to launch a full assault.
With hours to prepare, the orphans had carefully hung the terillium netting across the open spaces in the district's parking garages. From behind it, they watched the police gear up for their big approach. The zeros kept their weapons below the ledge, waiting for the perfect moment.
The police and the National Guard vehicles sailed through the crisis box as the orphans' rifle barrels slipped up under the netting.
From behind the thin layer of bulletproof material, from open windows inside the school, from everywhere on the bolt, the orphans opened fire.
They had the officers and soldiers from every direction, and fired in concert. The police vehicles, though heavily reinforced, took a significant beating. The barrage scrubbed the vehicles of every unarmored protrusion. Mirrors, lights, antenna and landing gear, all were destroyed as the vehicles made their play for a successful boarding.
However, the blaze of gunfire didn't stop the assault. It was the stream of citizens being pushed from the lowest level garages that caught law enforcement's attention.
The adults were being pushed out into empty space, one hundred twenty seconds between them and the ground. Several of them were missing arms, or holding them, the severed limbs falling with them.
The combination of the incoming rounds and the forced ejection of the hostages caused the assault to break apart.
Several vehicles immediately began rescue operations, circling downward, collecting the falling bodies with their nets. Some of them hit the vehicles, leaving bloody marks in their passing, but none were missed.
Inside the garage Dante smiled. After about a hundred adults, he cut off the stream of forced jumpers. His plan worked, their assault had crumbled.
The news crews focused on the chaos and broadcast images of the falling bodies. In his office, Mayor Westbury leapt to his feet, an irrepressible grin slathered across his face.
Leonard feared the implications of that grin, but it was too late. They were both damned.
The portion of the incoming assault team that managed to land, found themselves on the old orphanage. The zeros had deliberately left it unguarded. It was the one place they could easily contain the officers.
Using a leapfrog strategy, the kids tactfully retreated. They let the police take ground, only to find it booby-trapped and then be attacked again. After losing a couple officers, the cops became irrationally desperate to hold their ground.
The children would let them have it and then withdraw a little more.
Soon the orphans had withdrawn to the bridges, and those were blown. The old orphanage became the police department's default HQ in the district.
Several teams had been assigned to secure the stadiums, it was a central part of their strategy, and it was from that area that they had been fought the hardest.
Before the assault, it was presumed that most of the orphans were occupied with their violent posturing in the stadium. It was now clear that the broadcast had been a ruse.
The volume of fire that met their initial assault, along with the expulsion of the hostages, implied that the images onscreen couldn't be happening in real-time. The orphans had been lying in wait.
The police forces had been reduced to half strength in a single assault. Several vehicles had been too damaged to make an accurate landing. The commanders knew their cause was lost. They could never take and hold the district against such superior and organized numbers.
Several soldiers acknowledged that the textbook definition of the word infantry had beaten their years of experience and superior firepower.
The orphans had shown power, decisiveness and cunning. The ruthless expulsion of the hostages had forced the police to reconsider their approach.
A few swat teams came in from directly overhead. They reached the rooftop of the domed amphitheater and made their way down to the next group of smaller stadiums.
Prepared for imminent hostilities, they discovere
d the abandoned central stadium, where corpses littered the field. By radio, they confirmed what many already suspected. The broadcast had been delayed.
The trio of combat engineers approached the top floor of the facility commonly known as God's Hotel. They wirelessly hacked a maintenance door and entered.
Invisible and silent, King, Splitter and Sorpresa floated at the end of a hallway in the infants' ward. Sounds of new lungs crying and cooing gradually registered as signs of life, as opposed to the cries of death they resembled.
God's Hotel had been one of the west coasts' premier resort hotels. Then it had grown old, fallen out of fashion and been donated to charity. The district allocated the unit for toddlers and infants. Life on God's Hotel was the inverse of the rest of the district.
The younger the child, the higher the floor they lived on, starting with the maternity ward they currently floated through. As the orphans grew older, they were moved down through the building until they started school. At that age, they were transferred to the Old Orphanage or the Athletic Complex.
Once a child entered school, getting sent to the Bolt was relatively easy. All you had to do was mildly annoy any of the adult supervisors on the wrong day. God's Hotel was paradise by comparison.
The female orphans who lived aboard the district were secretly, and temporarily, rendered infertile by the food and water, but infant orphans in a city of thirty million were expected.
The next two floors were that of a hospital fused with a preschool. The combat engineers remained silent as they passed the nurses, huddled with the babies and toddlers.
The video monitors had been disconnected, the shades were drawn and the women kept the young children focused on games or stories, distracted from what was happening outside.
King thanked God they were invisible. He was well aware that their presence would have caused the room to devolve into panic and desperation.
Evacuated personnel occupied the lower levels, teachers, nurses and soldiers who'd voted to surrender citizenship in the interests of survival and equality, but mostly survival.
King entered the administration wing. They met Captain Snow in the security offices. King led the soldiers into an empty holding cell, seeming to desire a private conversation.
Captain Snow shut the door.
They pulled their oxygen masks off.
"Look. Okay. I get it." Splitter said. "No one wants to sink a bunch of innocent kids. But they're not innocent. What they did in the stadium was unforgivable. There must be a hundred corpses in there. Citizen corpses. Someone has to answer for that!”
First Sergeant King looked at the floor, "There's a lot at play here. We have to be cautious. We don't call the shots.”
The staff sergeant looked over to his captain. "So what are we going to do?”
"We aren't going to do anything." Snow answered.
"Then what are we doing in this shithole district?" he asked. "They're killing US Citizens! We can't allow that. This is all because of that guy Kilo! Fuck that son of a bitch. Where is he anyhow?”
"He's double checking the detonators, making sure everything is still wired." Captain Snow answered.
Splitter didn't like the menacing looks he was getting from First Sergeant King and Captain Snow. Like he'd been hit with a laser, he realized what was happening.
The others watched understanding wash over his face. Splitter pulled his weapon; no one spoke or moved to stop him. He held it, pointed at First Sergeant King.
"Do you realize you're pointing a weapon at me, Sergeant?”
Splitter lowered the gun.
King put a hand on Splitter's shoulder. "You seem a little stressed out. I need you to take a step back for a minute. We're not going to put anything in your jacket, but things are about to get real hairy out there and we still have a mission to complete. You understand what I'm saying.”
Splitter nodded. He calmly gave up his weapons without a fight.
"Go on, take a seat, kid.”
Splitter sat down on the wall bench of the plastic holding cell.
Snow, King and Sorpresa replaced their masks and stepped out. Splitter stayed on the bench.
Captain Snow locked the door.
Outside the cell, Captain Snow told King to take Sorpresa over to the athletic complex and look for kids or adults who needed medical evacuation.
King nodded and they set off.