15
It didn’t take long. An hour later, Rev was part of a line around Natividad’s Municipal Center, which had been taken over as the Marines’ command post, as protestors showed up. A klick and a half away, the second lift of landing craft was bringing in more Marines, including the heavier mech and armor forces.
“Get out, Imperialists,” was one of the least offensive things shouted at them. The rest were more along the lines of blasphemers and traitors and for them to do things that were probably not physically possible. Colorful, but not possible.
“I sure didn’t expect to be doing this,” Tomiko passed to him.
With the ease of landing, neither had Rev. But the people had reacted quickly despite the zero-dark-thirty hour. They must have known something was coming. The kapos and quislings on Tenerife were no secret, and the Angel shits had to be expecting some reaction, just not when. So, while the initial landing all across the planet had taken them by tactical surprise, they had been ready for the possibility.
“Not for much longer. As soon as the CRA troops get here, they’ll take over,” Rev said.
“Yeah, on the third lift.”
Marines, based on the millennias-old policy of posse comitatus, had no real authority over civilians, and for the moment, the people on the planet were not combatants. No one expected that to last, especially once the Civil Reaction Authority troops started arresting folk. When they started fighting back, the colonel commanding the CRA force would officially request assistance from the admiral, thereby deputizing the Marines and Navy until the waiting Perseus Union Directorate could issue a formal declaration of war. Rounding up and/or fighting the Angel shits would shift to the responsibility of the military, while the CRA troops would take over the handling of both detainees (Prisoners of War, but the Marines had been instructed not to use that term for the duration) and displaced persons.
It was all theater, trying to give a veneer of working within the law. The truth, and every Marine and sailor knew it, was they were there to crush the Angel shits, nothing less. Across human space, similar actions were being conducted on other centers of mass of Children of Angels, while smaller groups and even individuals were being sought out wherever they were.
A rock came hurtling out from behind the crowd, hitting the staff sergeant in the chest. Not that a rock was going to do anything to him, but it showed the people were getting more aggressive.
None of the Raiders had been trained in riot control tactics, so this was new turf for them. The infantry in their PAL-3s would be more imposing, but they were providing security for the spaceport, so the Raiders, Sappers, and Recon Marines had been shanghaied to protect the CP.
“Stupid move to occupy this thing now, before the rest of us land,” Rev told Tomiko.
“Optics, Rev. We’re in charge and all that.”
“At least we could have waited for the mechs. Can you imagine Udu facing these yahoos?”
Tomiko laughed and said, “She’d zero the lot of them and ask permission later.”
“Save us some time, at least.”
“Probably the right thing to do, though. I mean, we all know what’s gonna happen here. In a couple of hours, maybe as long as until tomorrow, we’ll be in combat with these fuckers. I swear, orders or not, if even one of them looks at me funny, I’m gonna drop him.”
“Wait one,” Rev said, cutting the comms and connecting with Yazzie.
“T2, keep it tight. Don’t drift forward.”
“Sorry,” she said as she took a step back into line.
“Keep an eye on her,” he passed to Tomiko on their P2P circuit again. “I think the excitement is getting to her. All we need would be for her to get snatched.”
During the grand total of thirteen minutes of the frag order, they’d been told three times about the danger of getting snatched and dragged away by the mob. Rev wasn’t going to let that happen, ROI be damned. Tomiko was right. In an hour, in a day—soon, for sure—this was going to devolve into a shooting war. No question about it. And he’d be damned if one of his element was going to be killed just so the task force could play-act that they were not there to crush the Children of Angels.
This was the calm before the storm. When daylight came, things were going to get hot.
Rev looked to the horizon to try and gauge when dawn might arrive. There might be the slightest hint of rose over the eastern mountains. It was nothing compared to the Witch’s Broom. He quickly switched his filter, and the sky lit up gloriously. It was a shame that something so special was being tainted by traitors. He stood there and stared for a long moment before he sighed and switched his filter back.
The night sky turned to black, and the harsh lights around the Muni Center placed the angry crowd into stark relief.