Chapter 9 - Battle of Baltimore

"AI, contact Major MacAllistor. Send an emergency request through the fleet, I need a squad of Marines immediately with blast rifles and armour, whoever is ready to go right fucking now. Not 'now', not 'right now', right FUCKING now!"

"Understood, Tribune Whitefeather. A ready platoon from the assault ship Da Nang is proceeding to the site. Arrival in thirty seconds. Remote-controlled nexus in target's office has been activated."

"Thank Da Nang's captain for me. I'm heading down myself."

The terrified women and children in the shelter could hear the battering ram splintering the front door. It held on slightly longer than the AI predicted, as it had a steel core. It was the casement that finally gave way. The house mother, Charlene Greerson, had gathered her sixteen charges and their offspring all upstairs and there they waited, unarmed and desperate. Charlene peered around the corner as one of the mothers frantically whispered to 911 on a cell phone. The landlines and power had already been cut.

Suddenly, a large and burly figure burst from the office - an office which had been unoccupied, Charlene was certain, not ten seconds before. He took a glance up the stairs, gave them a reassuring 'thumb's up', and took position near the door, RS-1 stinger rifle aimed at the egress. Another trooper silently and expertly took position across the hallway. A third and fourth went down the hallway toward the back of the structure.

A fifth, just as brawny as the others, climbed the stairs two at a time backwards, keeping his stinger rifle pointed at the front door, no mean feat when you're also carrying a heavy satchel over your other shoulder. He dashed around the corner and broke down the closet with a single mighty blow of his heel. Wordlessly, he removed a round disk from his satchel, placed it on the floor, and activated it. "Who's in charge?" he demanded in a whisper.

"I am," Charlene advised him, still terrified but determined to protect her charges.

"How many?"

"Attackers? I don't know."

"We do. Let us worry about them. How many women, kids, staff?"

"Sixteen women, 47 kids and three night staff."

"Are they all up here, or are any in the basement?"

"We're all up here. Basement's empty, or should be."

The Marine cursed, took on a faraway look for a moment, and shortly additional Marines showed up to cover the basement.

There was a smashing sound and a flickering glow came through the rear windows. "Molotov cocktail!" He looked around. "Stick construction? It'll go up like a shingle factory. Everybody, we're leaving now!"

He grabbed Charlene, as gently as possible. "This is taking you to a hospital ship in orbit. They'll check you out. I don't know what happens next, they just sent us to get you folks the hell out a' Dodge."

The front door finally fell, having given them time to organize both a defence and a retreat in its valiant last stand. About four simultaneous stinger blasts coincided with a single shotgun blast. The blast, aimed upward, splintered the floor above. Some of the splinters entered a handful of the evacuees, lending even more urgency to their scramble to get out.

"When you get to the other side, jump out of the way. The next person will be following you immediately. Go, go, go!"

Down on the first floor, Tribune Whitefeather, battle-armoured, tall as a Marine and twice as furious, strode to where the knot of idiots had used a battering ram to ring the doorbell. He picked up one unconscious body that appeared to still be breathing and with adrenaline assisting the strength his Darjee enhancement had given him, picked it up like it were a child's teddy bear and hauled it back to the office.

"One prisoner for interrogation. Heads up!"

"Ready to receive prisoners," Major MacAllistor advised him.

With an almost negligent toss, he fired the body through the nexus.

"Did it live?" he asked callously.

"Yes, it did. We're waking it up now."

On board the Clara Barton, organized, controlled chaos reigned. Doctors rapidly and efficiently triaged the women and children as they arrived on board. Charlene blinked as nurses, some dressed in scandalously scanty shifts that were vaguely uniform-ish, directed the women under her protection to medical pod rooms. She noted that some care was taken to keep each family together.

Now that the crisis was largely over, she found the time to break down and sob. It had been a terrifying night.

One of the nurses came over to her and put her arm around the sobbing social services worker. Whispering words of comfort that Charlene didn't register, the nurse walked her down the hall and into a med pod. Before she had finished lying back, she was soundly and peacefully asleep.

Up on the Cabot, Major MacAllistor watched Marine Lieutenant Nancy Tremaine do her work. She was skilled at interrogation. She was also a real hot number. Billy Clanton didn't stand a snowball's chance in Hell, with a CAP score of 3.1 and most of his thinking being done by his gonads. Girls from his native backwoods Tennessee just didn't come as sneaky as this cute Parisian.

"The bastard's going to be recycled?" she asked Major MacAllistor, pinning him with eyes of pure steel.

"Yes," replied the Major, somewhat uncertainly.

"Good," she smiled mirthlessly. "I like playing with my food." She turned and entered the compartment holding the doomed Clanton.

A chill ran down MacAllistor's spine. This girl was cold as ice.

Inside, Tremaine was quite a bit warmer than in the hallway. She laid on the French accent nice and thick, and with a little cooing in his ear and fondling of his penis, had the man spilling his guts.

"Yeah, Reverend Tom, he arranged things. He found out about the shelter, got some o' us boys together and we punished the bitches real good. Ain't no way even one o' 'em is gettin' away."

"Oh, you big brave man, facing down zee evil zpacemen." Her body was doing a wonderful imitation of a quilt as she gave him a full-body massage - full body on both their parts. He wished he could reciprocate more, but then he was attached to a dental-chair-like device by ankle and wrist cuffs and a metal collar. At least he was buck-naked and she could (ahem) get a grip on things.

Shortly afterwards, she emerged. "OK," she instructed, all trace of Parisian accent gone, "We've gotten out of the bastard everything he knows. Space him."

"Remind me never to get on your bad side," Major MacAllistor remarked.

"Well, when I'm good, I'm very good, but when I'm bad," and with which she slinkily curled up into him and started to tongue his earlobe, "I'm better."

The Lieutenant became all business. "It's an Earth First terrorist attack. They knew that we'd talked to the manager of that facility and were determined to punish her for her temerity. The leader of this Earth First cell is a man named Reverend Thomas Blackwood, his church is the First Church of the Risen Christ. He's got roughly twenty people in his cell. The church is located..."

On the planet far below, things were nowhere near as peaceful. The fire on the back porch had finally caught the building's woodwork, illuminating the entire neighbourhood. Four bodies decorated the front porch. Two others served as lawn decorations. Police were starting to arrive, and a gun battle erupted between the first cruisers to arrive and the well-armed mob.

The police had two sources of backup. The Earth Firsters had counted on the police tactical team being delayed. They hadn't counted on the Confederacy Marines' rapid reaction, armour or ability to instantly extract the victims. The eight Earth Firsters on the street fell to well-placed stinger fire, and the four in the back didn't last any longer either. The occupants of the first squad car were now wounded, and one of the two in the second.

Back about six blocks away, trucks of the Baltimore Fire Department sat uselessly, their frustrated crews prevented by the indiscriminate flying lead from getting any closer to the conflagration. They were chomping at the bit, knowing that the women's shelter meant kids' and their mothers' lives were in danger. They had no clue that every woman and child from the shelter was currently some 22,000 miles straight up, and safe as houses.

As the tactical squad pulled up, the last of the Earth First terrorists fell and was dragged by the heels and turfed unceremoniously into the nexus.

The three wounded police officers would have died, but they were among the first thrust into the second nexus and deposited aboard Barton. Their handguns were passed along to the police sergeant who showed up with the tactical team. The partner of the third shot officer refused to leave his side, and handing his sidearm to the police sergeant he too went up as "official police escort".

By the time Tribune Whitefeather arrived on board Barton, things had settled down. The head surgeon was able to give him a summary.

"The most seriously wounded were the police officers." He took the Tribune over to the medical bay containing the three officers. The fourth had been shoved into a medical pod partially as a safety check, and partially to put him to sleep for awhile so he wouldn't be sitting stewing over his buddies. He was now awake again. "Two suffered soft-tissue injuries and will be out of the pod in about fifteen minutes, ready for duty. We've had the replicator replace those parts of the uniform that we had to remove with vibro-knives. They can basically dress themselves and return to Earth. The third had a round go through his radius and ulna, that will take another hour to knit, and also had an apparently asymptomatic and thereby undiagnosed cancer of the pancreas. It would have been fatal, but fortunately we've been able to cure it. He'll be fine."

The fourth officer was shaken by what he heard. "Anything wrong with me?"

"Some mild, very-early-stage arteriosclerosis, now fixed, and some cartilage damage to your right knee, apparently in childhood. That would have given you serious trouble in your old age; it's fixed now too." The doctor smiled at him kindly. "You're better than new, and won't need a medical for at least five years."

The officer nodded absently, his mind still largely on his partner and the other officers.

"The women and children from the shelter, a few were hit with splinters from that shotgun blast, that's fixed. Some had injuries from their abusive spouses, a few of them are still in medical pods getting healed broken bones fixed properly, black eyes, scarring, broken teeth, that sort of thing fixed. Everyone should be out of the pods by tomorrow morning."

Reverend Tom hauled open the back door of the manse of the First Church of the Risen Christ in response to the coded knock - the dot, dot-dot-dash-dot of 'EF'. Instead of one of his Earth First congregants, however, it was a squad of Confederacy Marines, looking bloody and mean.

"Reverend Thomas Blackwood? We must have a word. Specifically, the word 'confession'. It's supposed to be good for the soul." Stalactites of sarcasm dripped from every syllable the Marine major spoke.

Behind the Marine, the first sunlight of the new day began to sparkle over everything. With a sinking feeling, Reverend Tom realized it was the last sunrise he would ever see.