GWOT I - Main Premises
May. 26th, 2023 09:56 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
drewkitty[This tale is from the very beginning of the Firecracker War and the series.]
I left Stanford for the second time. I'd made contact. That was the training. When everything around you turns to utter shit, make contact with your dispatcher. Or your commander. Or someone who can tell you what to do, and report your fate.
Utter shit. That is about the best I can do, to explain the madhouse at Stanford. But it was an organized chaos, a desperate and brutal effort to snatch as many human lives as possible from the maw of the furnace.
Many of the faculty were being evacuated. Elderly, brilliant minds, they had no place here. Organized convoys with a couple of buses in the lead, a parade of cars, and a single sheriff's or police car to lend dignity and protection.
The staff and students had been put to work. On a normal day, the Stanford hospital complex provides patient care for hundreds and hundreds of people, smoothly.
It was now being asked to serve as the primary receiving hospital on the very edge of an apocalypse. Thousands of shock-trauma casualties, horrific burns, radiation poisoning. Arriving. Every. Hour.
As fast as they arrived, they were being pushed out. Triage is normally using tarps, not athletic fields. But athletics fields are what Stanford has, and therefore what were being used.
Expectant - the baseball diamond. That was where I had worked, helping identify bodies.
Immediate - the tennis courts complex. Beds, gurneys, ventilators, a maze of generators and lights and power to medical equipment.
Delayed - the Stanford stadium. People who could wait, and probably not die while waiting. It was half full.
Minor / as yet not triaged - the soccer fields, except for the one reserved for the helicopters.
Even my untrained eye could see that they had had a plan for this, or come up with one on the fly. I'd been kicked awake in Redwood City, then we'd escorted a convoy of wounded and the processing system had picked me out. Uniformed, if only a guard. Able to take orders. Put to work.
The same system had spat me out two days later. I'd promptly stolen a car - the same one I now had combat parked several blocks away - and started checking my accounts.
Now my uniform and badge got me through the first set of barricades. That was all I needed. A little busyness got me into a building, which got me to a phone. A working dial tone. Something we all take for granted.
"Operations," answered the soothing tones of our East Coast dispatcher.
I identified myself and gave my passdown.
"Echo 18, Palo Alto area..." the litany began. The litany of bad news. Evacuated, looted, burned, dead, dead, dead... a field supervisor is a skilled observer. My observations.
"What are my instructions?" I asked at the end.
They gave me an address. "We haven't had contact. They're a Fortune 500 information corporation. They should have several redundant comms. But they aren't answering anything, not even their sat phone. Find out what is going on and get back to us."
The address was in San Jose. In the dim world that was Before, I'd have done a little Googling, maybe fired up an app to get me directions there.
I wrote the address on my left forearm above my watch. I did not take out my phone. It was powered off, to save battery. Not that any cell sites were working.
The stolen car still had a half tank of gas. That would have to do.
When I got back to it, someone was trying the door handle.
I drew my pistol.
"What are you going to do, shoot me?"
I stepped over them, got in the car and drove off smoothly.
###
Instinctively I avoided freeways. This was a very good call, I learned when driving over an overpass that did not connect, and saw the lines of cars all headed south in both directions. Freeway reversal.
I was wearing a uniform and moving with a purpose. I avoided - drove around - knots of traffic. Were they confused drivers? Accidents? Control points? I didn't want to know.
By the time I reached the gate of the address, the car was running on fumes just above the E.
There was a guard shack. Door open. Windows shattered. Two gates up, the third gate broken off by a gate runner.
I dismounted. I did not draw my pistol. This was not pistol work.
So I sliced the pie, calling out "[COMPANY] Security!" with the rifle welded to my right cheek, according to the doctrine from the tactical patrol rifle course. I'd never served in the military, and now bitterly regretted the lack. Rifleman skills would be very useful right about now.
Two bodies in the shack. Both cold. One in rigor. One had a ripped-off ID lanyard. The other's ID was missing.
I flipped open the post orders book, glanced briefly to the BADGES page, so I would know what they looked like.
Signed in the log book, issued myself a bright yellow CONTRACTOR sticker. Tossed the drawer for keys. One of the dead had had a belt keeper, but no key ring on it.
I got the roll of yellow CAUTION tape and tied off the three gates. Then I looked at the phone. There was a number, for the main security control. I dialed it.
Endless ring.
That's not how any of this should work.
I brought my car through the exit gate, propped my rifle against the passenger seat, and drove up the long sweeping steep access road towards the main premises.
The entire time, I would in peacetime be under camera observation. Or binoculars from the roof. Ground sensors for traffic.
A second set of gates at the top, no guard shack, all electronic and card readers. Someone had driven a truck through without the formality of stopping. So I did as well.
Imagine, if you will, a medieval castle. A wall, a moat, a gatehouse.
This was a series of four story buildings arranged in a rough oval, with two large low buildings in the center. Cheerful signage pointed the one direction for VISITOR and the other direction for DELIVERIES.
I know my profession's place. I turned towards DELIVERIES.
It wasn't on fire. That was the good news. One account I'd checked was fully involved on my arrival, thick dense smoke swirling up to the sky. Another had already smouldered down to foundations.
There was a liftgate delivery truck half-parked across the loading dock, liftgate neither down nor up. I'd passed two more control gates, both defeated, to get to this spot.
They'd had pretty paranoid security. It had been breached.
So I parked my car some distance further away, made sure I had both my rifle and my backpack, paused while waiting for someone to respond, drank two bottles of water, pissed against my back rear tire, and only finally advanced into the building after giving lots of time for anyone to notice me and object.
This got me to a set of double doors and a bulletproof service window. And a side door, ajar, which I immediately checked after calling out "[COMPANY] Security!"
"STOP!" shouted a woman with frizzy hair. Amazing what detail my eye picked out. Not her hands, not the broken-off broomstick held in them like a spear. The hair.
"OK," I said agreeably with my rifle pointed at the ceiling at a 45 degree angle. "I'm here to help. Echo 18, [Company] Security."
"You're a little late for your shift," she exclaimed. "Like four days."
"It's been busy out there," I snapped. "And I'm not a rover. I'm a field supervisor."
Her eye snapped to my uniform and gold metal badge. My eye mapped her - somewhat similar uniform, no metal badge - and level of untidiness. Typical for discount security, not acceptable for us. In peacetime.
Which this was not. Or I wouldn't be carrying the rifle.
"You... signed yourself in?"
I nodded. "Had to show I was a good guy. Didn't know if you had snipers."
"We have Jack and Shit. And Jack left town."
I nodded again and replied. "Shop smart. Shop S-Mart."
Establishing that we had an Employer and a taste for cheesy movies in common, I slung the rifle and she set aside her ... broom stick, not boom stick.
We would have to fix that. I drew my pistol and gave it to her butt first.
She took it like someone who knew how.
"What do we do now?" she asked. Her access badge said "Sharon G" and that she was CONTRACT SECURITY, in yellow with a blue border.
She'd done what she knew how to do, at her level. Tried to control building access.
"We find other survivors, we establish a perimeter, we do a sweep. I need keys, access badge, a radio. Establish a medical treatment area. Post observers."
"Snipers."
"Us or someone else?"
"Front entrance. Can't get out the lobby without someone firing at you. Some have made it back in, but others..."
The luck of the draw. If I'd driven up front, I'd have drawn fire. I kind of knew what I was doing, I might not have been killed.
"Let's lock down what we can."
I moved the delivery truck to actually block the entrance. Left the keys in the visor in best Terminator 2 style.
Sharon's badge got us into Security Control.
No one had answered the phone because no one was in there. There was mild chaos - a knocked over coffee cup, an abandoned college textbook at the dispatch console - but no signs of violence or intrusion.
She knew how to run the cameras. I knew what to look for. People. Just people.
A quick glance at the intrusion and fire alarm consoles. So far so good.
My thinking was that most employees had locked themselves in their offices or work areas, and the handful of looters had gotten bored and/or lost.
There was one way to find out. Go look.
###
"Who the fuck are you?" boomed a man in jeans and cowboy boots and a Texan vest, with a heavy revolver on his hip and a lever action rifle in his hands. His badge was white with a blue border. He'd met us at the Facilities Desk when we'd badged in to that area.
"Echo 18, [Company] Security. Florida sent me to check on the site, and why you're not answering your phone."
Sharon was now carrying, with its strap, the hard case labeled SATPHONE EMERGENCY USE ONLY that had been gathering dust in Security Control.
"I didn't know we had that," he exclaimed.
"Mind if we adjourn to the roof and make some calls?"
"Who's watching the loading dock?"
"A couple scared Employees with a working radio. They'll call us if they see anything."
He promptly turned to the stairwell, up. So we followed.
The moment I had the satphone out, antenna unfolded and powered up, he took it from my hands. I let him.
It rang immediately.
"Bryan Smythers, Vice President Facilities Operations," he answered.
Contact. Made.
###
Sharon had only needed someone to tell her what to do. I'd provided that.
VP Smythers as well, just at a higher level. Florida, or was it New York? had provided that, via the sat phone.
"What are my orders?" I therefore asked him.
"You're Security. Go secure something. At least you have a gun."
Well, it was an order, however dismissive.
I firmly repossessed the sat phone to make my own call.
That one blessed word. Sanity amid madness.
The dial tone was different.
But the calm, cool tone of the dispatcher was the same.
"Operations."
I left Stanford for the second time. I'd made contact. That was the training. When everything around you turns to utter shit, make contact with your dispatcher. Or your commander. Or someone who can tell you what to do, and report your fate.
Utter shit. That is about the best I can do, to explain the madhouse at Stanford. But it was an organized chaos, a desperate and brutal effort to snatch as many human lives as possible from the maw of the furnace.
Many of the faculty were being evacuated. Elderly, brilliant minds, they had no place here. Organized convoys with a couple of buses in the lead, a parade of cars, and a single sheriff's or police car to lend dignity and protection.
The staff and students had been put to work. On a normal day, the Stanford hospital complex provides patient care for hundreds and hundreds of people, smoothly.
It was now being asked to serve as the primary receiving hospital on the very edge of an apocalypse. Thousands of shock-trauma casualties, horrific burns, radiation poisoning. Arriving. Every. Hour.
As fast as they arrived, they were being pushed out. Triage is normally using tarps, not athletic fields. But athletics fields are what Stanford has, and therefore what were being used.
Expectant - the baseball diamond. That was where I had worked, helping identify bodies.
Immediate - the tennis courts complex. Beds, gurneys, ventilators, a maze of generators and lights and power to medical equipment.
Delayed - the Stanford stadium. People who could wait, and probably not die while waiting. It was half full.
Minor / as yet not triaged - the soccer fields, except for the one reserved for the helicopters.
Even my untrained eye could see that they had had a plan for this, or come up with one on the fly. I'd been kicked awake in Redwood City, then we'd escorted a convoy of wounded and the processing system had picked me out. Uniformed, if only a guard. Able to take orders. Put to work.
The same system had spat me out two days later. I'd promptly stolen a car - the same one I now had combat parked several blocks away - and started checking my accounts.
Now my uniform and badge got me through the first set of barricades. That was all I needed. A little busyness got me into a building, which got me to a phone. A working dial tone. Something we all take for granted.
"Operations," answered the soothing tones of our East Coast dispatcher.
I identified myself and gave my passdown.
"Echo 18, Palo Alto area..." the litany began. The litany of bad news. Evacuated, looted, burned, dead, dead, dead... a field supervisor is a skilled observer. My observations.
"What are my instructions?" I asked at the end.
They gave me an address. "We haven't had contact. They're a Fortune 500 information corporation. They should have several redundant comms. But they aren't answering anything, not even their sat phone. Find out what is going on and get back to us."
The address was in San Jose. In the dim world that was Before, I'd have done a little Googling, maybe fired up an app to get me directions there.
I wrote the address on my left forearm above my watch. I did not take out my phone. It was powered off, to save battery. Not that any cell sites were working.
The stolen car still had a half tank of gas. That would have to do.
When I got back to it, someone was trying the door handle.
I drew my pistol.
"What are you going to do, shoot me?"
I stepped over them, got in the car and drove off smoothly.
###
Instinctively I avoided freeways. This was a very good call, I learned when driving over an overpass that did not connect, and saw the lines of cars all headed south in both directions. Freeway reversal.
I was wearing a uniform and moving with a purpose. I avoided - drove around - knots of traffic. Were they confused drivers? Accidents? Control points? I didn't want to know.
By the time I reached the gate of the address, the car was running on fumes just above the E.
There was a guard shack. Door open. Windows shattered. Two gates up, the third gate broken off by a gate runner.
I dismounted. I did not draw my pistol. This was not pistol work.
So I sliced the pie, calling out "[COMPANY] Security!" with the rifle welded to my right cheek, according to the doctrine from the tactical patrol rifle course. I'd never served in the military, and now bitterly regretted the lack. Rifleman skills would be very useful right about now.
Two bodies in the shack. Both cold. One in rigor. One had a ripped-off ID lanyard. The other's ID was missing.
I flipped open the post orders book, glanced briefly to the BADGES page, so I would know what they looked like.
Signed in the log book, issued myself a bright yellow CONTRACTOR sticker. Tossed the drawer for keys. One of the dead had had a belt keeper, but no key ring on it.
I got the roll of yellow CAUTION tape and tied off the three gates. Then I looked at the phone. There was a number, for the main security control. I dialed it.
Endless ring.
That's not how any of this should work.
I brought my car through the exit gate, propped my rifle against the passenger seat, and drove up the long sweeping steep access road towards the main premises.
The entire time, I would in peacetime be under camera observation. Or binoculars from the roof. Ground sensors for traffic.
A second set of gates at the top, no guard shack, all electronic and card readers. Someone had driven a truck through without the formality of stopping. So I did as well.
Imagine, if you will, a medieval castle. A wall, a moat, a gatehouse.
This was a series of four story buildings arranged in a rough oval, with two large low buildings in the center. Cheerful signage pointed the one direction for VISITOR and the other direction for DELIVERIES.
I know my profession's place. I turned towards DELIVERIES.
It wasn't on fire. That was the good news. One account I'd checked was fully involved on my arrival, thick dense smoke swirling up to the sky. Another had already smouldered down to foundations.
There was a liftgate delivery truck half-parked across the loading dock, liftgate neither down nor up. I'd passed two more control gates, both defeated, to get to this spot.
They'd had pretty paranoid security. It had been breached.
So I parked my car some distance further away, made sure I had both my rifle and my backpack, paused while waiting for someone to respond, drank two bottles of water, pissed against my back rear tire, and only finally advanced into the building after giving lots of time for anyone to notice me and object.
This got me to a set of double doors and a bulletproof service window. And a side door, ajar, which I immediately checked after calling out "[COMPANY] Security!"
"STOP!" shouted a woman with frizzy hair. Amazing what detail my eye picked out. Not her hands, not the broken-off broomstick held in them like a spear. The hair.
"OK," I said agreeably with my rifle pointed at the ceiling at a 45 degree angle. "I'm here to help. Echo 18, [Company] Security."
"You're a little late for your shift," she exclaimed. "Like four days."
"It's been busy out there," I snapped. "And I'm not a rover. I'm a field supervisor."
Her eye snapped to my uniform and gold metal badge. My eye mapped her - somewhat similar uniform, no metal badge - and level of untidiness. Typical for discount security, not acceptable for us. In peacetime.
Which this was not. Or I wouldn't be carrying the rifle.
"You... signed yourself in?"
I nodded. "Had to show I was a good guy. Didn't know if you had snipers."
"We have Jack and Shit. And Jack left town."
I nodded again and replied. "Shop smart. Shop S-Mart."
Establishing that we had an Employer and a taste for cheesy movies in common, I slung the rifle and she set aside her ... broom stick, not boom stick.
We would have to fix that. I drew my pistol and gave it to her butt first.
She took it like someone who knew how.
"What do we do now?" she asked. Her access badge said "Sharon G" and that she was CONTRACT SECURITY, in yellow with a blue border.
She'd done what she knew how to do, at her level. Tried to control building access.
"We find other survivors, we establish a perimeter, we do a sweep. I need keys, access badge, a radio. Establish a medical treatment area. Post observers."
"Snipers."
"Us or someone else?"
"Front entrance. Can't get out the lobby without someone firing at you. Some have made it back in, but others..."
The luck of the draw. If I'd driven up front, I'd have drawn fire. I kind of knew what I was doing, I might not have been killed.
"Let's lock down what we can."
I moved the delivery truck to actually block the entrance. Left the keys in the visor in best Terminator 2 style.
Sharon's badge got us into Security Control.
No one had answered the phone because no one was in there. There was mild chaos - a knocked over coffee cup, an abandoned college textbook at the dispatch console - but no signs of violence or intrusion.
She knew how to run the cameras. I knew what to look for. People. Just people.
A quick glance at the intrusion and fire alarm consoles. So far so good.
My thinking was that most employees had locked themselves in their offices or work areas, and the handful of looters had gotten bored and/or lost.
There was one way to find out. Go look.
###
"Who the fuck are you?" boomed a man in jeans and cowboy boots and a Texan vest, with a heavy revolver on his hip and a lever action rifle in his hands. His badge was white with a blue border. He'd met us at the Facilities Desk when we'd badged in to that area.
"Echo 18, [Company] Security. Florida sent me to check on the site, and why you're not answering your phone."
Sharon was now carrying, with its strap, the hard case labeled SATPHONE EMERGENCY USE ONLY that had been gathering dust in Security Control.
"I didn't know we had that," he exclaimed.
"Mind if we adjourn to the roof and make some calls?"
"Who's watching the loading dock?"
"A couple scared Employees with a working radio. They'll call us if they see anything."
He promptly turned to the stairwell, up. So we followed.
The moment I had the satphone out, antenna unfolded and powered up, he took it from my hands. I let him.
It rang immediately.
"Bryan Smythers, Vice President Facilities Operations," he answered.
Contact. Made.
###
Sharon had only needed someone to tell her what to do. I'd provided that.
VP Smythers as well, just at a higher level. Florida, or was it New York? had provided that, via the sat phone.
"What are my orders?" I therefore asked him.
"You're Security. Go secure something. At least you have a gun."
Well, it was an order, however dismissive.
I firmly repossessed the sat phone to make my own call.
That one blessed word. Sanity amid madness.
The dial tone was different.
But the calm, cool tone of the dispatcher was the same.
"Operations."
