GWOT VII - Says Your Mom!
May. 20th, 2021 06:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
drewkittyGWOT VII - Says Your Mom?
My visit to the Embassy was almost over. I'd set up the important elements - the Big Reception, the port call, the increasingly alarmed Chinese officials wondering what the hell?
And a good excuse to have a Cube in the city. That was important.
Now I had to take my Cube on the road. And I had to sleep sometime.
This would be a good gig for Brooke. Except that she was very, very dead.
Major Rize had been present. She hadn't been Bear Force then. Just an unwilling Resistance commando about to be used up like a wad of cheap toilet paper. But combat is funny, and Brooke had seen no point to sneaking about when she'd had a good shot at a Homeland command officer, with Sarah and Betty already dead or nearly so.
But Betty wasn't. And she'd knifed her way out of the trap, and discovered at long last what Brooke and I had been trying to beat into her for months.
Her killer instinct.
Thus Bear Force. And thus surviving in the Bear Force when most recruits have a life expectancy of weeks in the field.
I went to the Embassy motor pool. I signed out a host-provided jeep. We'd bought it, and gone over it with a fine-toothed comb, including partial teardown, and probably gotten most of the bugs but not all.
That was OK. I wasn't doing anything I didn't expect to have be notorious.
Betty met me with her rucksack. I excused myself to go get my rucksack, and the Cube.
Again, timing. The Ambassador was still on her way back from the docks.
Except she wasn't.
She was right here, standing in the door, with a very not bored Strategic Defense Force trooper leveling her submachine gun on her nominal boss, and several other Embassy staff trying to figure out to how to defuse the irresistable force (her) and the immovable object (the trooper's loyalty to California).
I shook my head slightly.
"Ambassador. My quarters are very much off limits to you. Did you get your message from the Governor?"
That little narrowing of the pupils that I'd been taught at some trouble to start to read.
"Trooper, if the Ambassador takes one step forward into the room, light her up. Try for her legs but hit her."
The SDF trooper backed up two paces and brought the submachine gun to her shoulder so that she could better angle it downwards. Staffers scattered.
"Think of your husband. Think of your children. Do you want to spend the rest of your life in a wheelchair?"
"Don't you fucking _dare_ to try to talk me down!"
"Someone has to," the Station Chief said mildly, with a hand in his pocket.
"I am the lawfully confirmed representative of the People of California! I demand to know what you brought into my embassy!"
I shrugged.
"Ask the Governor."
"I did."
"Then Pat chose not to tell you."
A palpable hit.
"Ambassador, you and I very much got off on the wrong foot. I'm sorry. If I thought I could make amends, I would. But there is nothing I could do, even if I wanted to, to show you my personal effects. If I tried, the SDF trooper would light _me_ up. Isn't that right, Station Chief?"
"Yes, sir. The orders are to keep the ... items ... secure from any unauthorized persons. The only authorized person in the Embassy is you. You are explicitly not authorized to show anyone else."
The situation was on the verge of going out of control. I thought wildly. And I thought of wilder actions.
I had a hole card I really didn't want to play. I really did have the authority to have the Ambassador shot. Or worse, relieved. That would doom her family, because Case Zulu's odds of killing Sacramento were rather close to unity. No point to flying out dependents just to fly them back. It would be kinder to shoot her and save her husband and her children.
Pat had already decided to ride it out above ground, in the Capitol. "I have no right to safety when millions are at risk," she'd told me, in the planning for this nightmare.
This moment risked billions. And it would be merely the first of many such moments to come.
I embraced the Ambassador in a kindly meant, tense bear hug. This allowed me to spin her clear of the frame of the door.
In cartoons, there is a tradition of showing two people fighting as a sketched ball of expletives, because showing the action is hopeless to attempt.
The Ambassador did her level best to escape my control hold and gouge out both my eyes and my balls at the same time. I held her so closely and so tightly that she could not reach.
She could reach, and tear, a bit of skin. Some of it was skin that Betty had torn earlier for better reasons.
Shift, move, go for the hold, get it, apply it HARD, get the flinch, move again.
And I had choked the Ambassador out.
I'll give her this much. She didn't tap. I wouldn't have let go, but she didn't know that.
Someone threw me a flexicuff and I flexicuffed her wrists behind her back.
Then I walked into my quarters, with a fresh limp, and picked up my bags. A rucksack and a roller case, that rolled rather heavily.
The SDF trooper followed.
Her orders said to keep the Object secure, with no idea what it was, and that I was the authorized carrier.
At the motor pool, she flinched.
"Sir...." she said helplessly to the air.
Her orders very carefully said nothing about the removal of the Object from the Embassy. Only that I was to maintain physical control of it, and that the SDF team would take it in turn to guard it when I was away from it.
We loaded our baggage.
The SDF team leader ran up, accompanied by three of his folks, all with submachine guns.
"Sir, do you plan to leave the Embassy with that?"
I nodded.
"We must therefore go with you, to provide a security team. Wilson! Get your gear!"
Relieved, and also relieved, the SDF trooper dashed off to get her rucksack.
I waited a few moments for her to clear.
"I have an authorized escort. Major Rize."
The team leader definitively shook his head.
"No, Colonel. She is not on my orders template. I have no authorization to change those orders without a confirmed communication from ah.... the Ambassador."
I had no doubt that the orders had been confirmed. But they hadn't been passed down properly. Goddamn it.
"Very well, Sergeant. But we're not traveling with six. Pick one other."
He picked Wilson.
An interesting problem in seating arose, which was neatly solved by Rize driving, me sitting behind her, the Sergeant sitting in the back, and Wilson taking front-right shotgun.
Not the date I had planned. But it would have to be made to work.
###
Not surprisingly, George and a rather scratch, heavily armed team of People's Armed Police joined us at the next red light.
I waved.
"Diplomatic, Vienna, yada yada yada," I called cheerily.
"Where are you going?"
"The hills, to see the sights."
"With a warship in port, and a reception planned?"
Quick work, George.
"I want to get out of the Embassy staff's hair."
"What does your boss think of that?"
Whatever the fuck I tell him to think.
If only the Ambassador was as tractable.
"We shall escort you. There is a ... what is the term ... taburn? tavern? about an hour out. Let me buy you dinner so that we can arrange appropriate escort."
It was not a request. And they had the implied right to not be blindsided, the way I'd had to blindside the Embassy staff.
Some of them might have had secret orders. And the Governor couldn't correct orders she didn't know about.
I nodded, the light changed, and George's vehicle took a discreet lead.
Traffic still scattered out of our way.
"Do you know what you're doing? the Sergeant asked.
"Yes, he does," Major Rize asserted.
No, I didn't. But I appreciated the immoral support.
My visit to the Embassy was almost over. I'd set up the important elements - the Big Reception, the port call, the increasingly alarmed Chinese officials wondering what the hell?
And a good excuse to have a Cube in the city. That was important.
Now I had to take my Cube on the road. And I had to sleep sometime.
This would be a good gig for Brooke. Except that she was very, very dead.
Major Rize had been present. She hadn't been Bear Force then. Just an unwilling Resistance commando about to be used up like a wad of cheap toilet paper. But combat is funny, and Brooke had seen no point to sneaking about when she'd had a good shot at a Homeland command officer, with Sarah and Betty already dead or nearly so.
But Betty wasn't. And she'd knifed her way out of the trap, and discovered at long last what Brooke and I had been trying to beat into her for months.
Her killer instinct.
Thus Bear Force. And thus surviving in the Bear Force when most recruits have a life expectancy of weeks in the field.
I went to the Embassy motor pool. I signed out a host-provided jeep. We'd bought it, and gone over it with a fine-toothed comb, including partial teardown, and probably gotten most of the bugs but not all.
That was OK. I wasn't doing anything I didn't expect to have be notorious.
Betty met me with her rucksack. I excused myself to go get my rucksack, and the Cube.
Again, timing. The Ambassador was still on her way back from the docks.
Except she wasn't.
She was right here, standing in the door, with a very not bored Strategic Defense Force trooper leveling her submachine gun on her nominal boss, and several other Embassy staff trying to figure out to how to defuse the irresistable force (her) and the immovable object (the trooper's loyalty to California).
I shook my head slightly.
"Ambassador. My quarters are very much off limits to you. Did you get your message from the Governor?"
That little narrowing of the pupils that I'd been taught at some trouble to start to read.
"Trooper, if the Ambassador takes one step forward into the room, light her up. Try for her legs but hit her."
The SDF trooper backed up two paces and brought the submachine gun to her shoulder so that she could better angle it downwards. Staffers scattered.
"Think of your husband. Think of your children. Do you want to spend the rest of your life in a wheelchair?"
"Don't you fucking _dare_ to try to talk me down!"
"Someone has to," the Station Chief said mildly, with a hand in his pocket.
"I am the lawfully confirmed representative of the People of California! I demand to know what you brought into my embassy!"
I shrugged.
"Ask the Governor."
"I did."
"Then Pat chose not to tell you."
A palpable hit.
"Ambassador, you and I very much got off on the wrong foot. I'm sorry. If I thought I could make amends, I would. But there is nothing I could do, even if I wanted to, to show you my personal effects. If I tried, the SDF trooper would light _me_ up. Isn't that right, Station Chief?"
"Yes, sir. The orders are to keep the ... items ... secure from any unauthorized persons. The only authorized person in the Embassy is you. You are explicitly not authorized to show anyone else."
The situation was on the verge of going out of control. I thought wildly. And I thought of wilder actions.
I had a hole card I really didn't want to play. I really did have the authority to have the Ambassador shot. Or worse, relieved. That would doom her family, because Case Zulu's odds of killing Sacramento were rather close to unity. No point to flying out dependents just to fly them back. It would be kinder to shoot her and save her husband and her children.
Pat had already decided to ride it out above ground, in the Capitol. "I have no right to safety when millions are at risk," she'd told me, in the planning for this nightmare.
This moment risked billions. And it would be merely the first of many such moments to come.
I embraced the Ambassador in a kindly meant, tense bear hug. This allowed me to spin her clear of the frame of the door.
In cartoons, there is a tradition of showing two people fighting as a sketched ball of expletives, because showing the action is hopeless to attempt.
The Ambassador did her level best to escape my control hold and gouge out both my eyes and my balls at the same time. I held her so closely and so tightly that she could not reach.
She could reach, and tear, a bit of skin. Some of it was skin that Betty had torn earlier for better reasons.
Shift, move, go for the hold, get it, apply it HARD, get the flinch, move again.
And I had choked the Ambassador out.
I'll give her this much. She didn't tap. I wouldn't have let go, but she didn't know that.
Someone threw me a flexicuff and I flexicuffed her wrists behind her back.
Then I walked into my quarters, with a fresh limp, and picked up my bags. A rucksack and a roller case, that rolled rather heavily.
The SDF trooper followed.
Her orders said to keep the Object secure, with no idea what it was, and that I was the authorized carrier.
At the motor pool, she flinched.
"Sir...." she said helplessly to the air.
Her orders very carefully said nothing about the removal of the Object from the Embassy. Only that I was to maintain physical control of it, and that the SDF team would take it in turn to guard it when I was away from it.
We loaded our baggage.
The SDF team leader ran up, accompanied by three of his folks, all with submachine guns.
"Sir, do you plan to leave the Embassy with that?"
I nodded.
"We must therefore go with you, to provide a security team. Wilson! Get your gear!"
Relieved, and also relieved, the SDF trooper dashed off to get her rucksack.
I waited a few moments for her to clear.
"I have an authorized escort. Major Rize."
The team leader definitively shook his head.
"No, Colonel. She is not on my orders template. I have no authorization to change those orders without a confirmed communication from ah.... the Ambassador."
I had no doubt that the orders had been confirmed. But they hadn't been passed down properly. Goddamn it.
"Very well, Sergeant. But we're not traveling with six. Pick one other."
He picked Wilson.
An interesting problem in seating arose, which was neatly solved by Rize driving, me sitting behind her, the Sergeant sitting in the back, and Wilson taking front-right shotgun.
Not the date I had planned. But it would have to be made to work.
###
Not surprisingly, George and a rather scratch, heavily armed team of People's Armed Police joined us at the next red light.
I waved.
"Diplomatic, Vienna, yada yada yada," I called cheerily.
"Where are you going?"
"The hills, to see the sights."
"With a warship in port, and a reception planned?"
Quick work, George.
"I want to get out of the Embassy staff's hair."
"What does your boss think of that?"
Whatever the fuck I tell him to think.
If only the Ambassador was as tractable.
"We shall escort you. There is a ... what is the term ... taburn? tavern? about an hour out. Let me buy you dinner so that we can arrange appropriate escort."
It was not a request. And they had the implied right to not be blindsided, the way I'd had to blindside the Embassy staff.
Some of them might have had secret orders. And the Governor couldn't correct orders she didn't know about.
I nodded, the light changed, and George's vehicle took a discreet lead.
Traffic still scattered out of our way.
"Do you know what you're doing? the Sergeant asked.
"Yes, he does," Major Rize asserted.
No, I didn't. But I appreciated the immoral support.
