City of McNair, Commitment
The moon threw a thin light across the city of McNair.
The streetscape was washed of all color: flame-blackened buildings, crude barricades smashed apart in the night’s fighting, smoke drifting from shops and government offices, from the wrecked cars, mobibots, and buses that littered the streets-all were painted in shades of gray splashed with daubs of black.
DocSec troopers in black jumpsuits and body armor, visors down and riot shields up, stood in small groups at crossroads, with more in front of those government offices as yet undamaged, stun guns and gas-grenade throwers cradled in their arms, assault rifles slung across their backs. Close at hand, half-tracks and troop carriers were parked in neat rows. They struck an incongruous note, their good order in stark contrast to the chaos around them.
The rioters had been forced out of the city center, harried and harassed every step of the way by DocSec; the streets were deserted. Nothing moved except smoke and ash.
The city waited, silent, still, an edgy calm settling over devastated streets.
Chief Councillor Polk stared out of the armored plasglass window of the flier while it climbed away from the brutal ceramcrete bulk of the Supreme Council building. From the air, McNair was an ugly sight. All across the city, piles of burning plasfiber spewed pillars of protest up into a gray sky, every greasy black plume of smoke a stark reminder that his grip on power might be slipping away.
He had been around long enough to know how the Hammer Worlds worked. When the unwritten contract between government and governed-prosperity and stability from the government in exchange for unquestioning acquiescence from the governed-started to unravel, it was up to DocSec to restore the status quo.
DocSec could deal with thousands of protesters: divide the mob up, kill any that stood and fought, track down those who ran, shoot some, imprison the rest, exile their families, and harass their friends and associates to remind them of the benefits of staying in line. The formula worked, as hundreds of neofascist governments had proved over the centuries. He just hoped it kept working long enough for him to die quietly in his own bed.
If the formula failed, DocSec would find itself facing millions of protesters. When it did-and Polk’s instincts told him it would happen sooner rather than later-it was just a matter of time before the whole rotten edifice that was the Hammer government collapsed. Something told him that the Worlds were closer to that day than anyone was prepared to admit.
Polk dismissed the problem; if the day came, it came, and when it did, why would he care? He would be dead, left to dangle by one leg from a streetlight. He sat back as the flier cleared McNair’s smoke-smeared skies. Without much success, he tried not to think about the day ahead: one meaningless public event after another, every second filmed by the holocams to demonstrate to the Hammer people that he, Jeremiah Polk, Chief Councillor of the Hammer of Kraa Worlds, was master of all the forces shaping the Worlds’ destiny.
Which he was not, as anyone with half a brain knew after the fiasco at Devastation Reef.
From the largest down to the smallest, his capacity to influence events was limited, laughably so. Kraa! Despite all his pushing, the Hammer of Kraa was unable to get even one miserable piece of Fed filth off Serhati, a planet that owed its day-to-day survival to Hammer largesse. How pitiful was that? Anyway, he consoled himself, at least he could make Helfort’s life miserable. That much he could and would do. Money slipped to a venal trashpress, money used to suborn Fed spacers with lavish hospitality-together they would make Helfort’s life hell. Polk told himself to be patient. One day, the relentless pressure would make Helfort careless, flush him out into the open, where a Hammer hit team would find a way to get to him.
Much cheered by that prospect, Polk found to his amazement that he was actually looking forward to the rest of the day.