I am serialising my dystopian/retro-futuristic sci-fi story here. Here is the tenth chapter, titled “The Fugitives”.
All chapters can be found here.
I will be adding a new chapter every Friday (when I don’t forget, sorry!).
Chapter 09 – The Fugitives
“This is a Milpol public order notice,” said a calm, synthetic female voice over the tannoy system. “Residents are advised to clear the streets and shelter in place. A curfew is in effect. Failure to comply may result in arrest and detention.”
They heard the sirens and saw copters flying over the ghetto, with side doors open and gunners hunched over cannons.
They started a timer.
They had the copies of the file marked “TOP SECRET – SECPOL + MILPOL LIASON EYES ONLY”, and knew that this meant that the deputy director’s shuttle was being prepared high above the planet. They knew that the surface Milpol force had been advised by Milpol command that they were conducting a civil unrest drill, and that the entire Milpol force had been placed in a state of readiness.
They knew that only one train had left the depot for the quarry this morning, filled with Kantary favoured workers (mostly informants), all screened and searched by Milpol, to act as background for the media, dressed in clean Kantary branded overalls.
They knew that the entire ghetto had been placed in lockdown, with no one coming in and no one going out.
When the timer reached one hour, they knew the deputy director would be flying on the shuttle to the surface, accompanied by Master Sergeant Vaz, his close-protection agent, and escorted by Lieutenant Prass and the Secpol special operations team.
They knew that Captain Smith and the Team 10 detachment, and her lover, the Milpol captain, were at the spaceport awaiting the shuttle.
At an hour and forty-eight minutes, they knew that the deputy director would be flying under escort to the quarry, and at two hours and fifty minutes, he had a private meeting with Guus Hendrix, SVP for Mining Operations at Kantary.
At three hours, they knew the deputy director would address the media, and at three hours and twenty minutes, the deputy director would detonate the blast on the east side of the quarry. Moments later, when the blast tremors triggered the seismic switch, the powerful bomb would detonate, and…
They waited. The timer read three hours and thirty-two minutes. That is when the sirens began, and they knew that something had happened.
According to the TOP SECRET – SECPOL + MILPOL LIASON EYES ONLY files, in the event of a security threat or security breach, Milpol will declare martial law and activate the social uprising response plan, and then they heard the calm, synthetic female voice over the tannoy system announce…
“This is a Milpol public order notice. Residents are advised that martial law has been declared. A curfew is in effect. Any residents seen on the streets are subject to lethal force.”
They heard sporadic gunfire and sirens echo across the ghetto, and the sky was filled with buzzing, hovering copters.
They were hiding in the oldest and most decayed part of the ghetto, the first cell blocks built for the first convicts, ethic undesirables, or political dissidents sent to the original penal colony. The area was old and crumbling, inhabited by old timers, street kids, feral isopods that had somehow made it into the ghetto, and those who had no other choices.
Their hideout was a ramshackle hut near the wire that covered an entrance to the sewer system. They lived deep below the surface, hiding in the pipes and sluices of the ghetto sewers, but they emerged to observe copter activity and scan the Milpol radio bands.
He sat in the hut, peering through a scope from a crack in the building, watching as Milpol patrol copters flew across the prairie. He was checking if they were circling the sewage outlet lagoon, where they had hidden the speeder. If they found the speeder, getting to the drop ship would be even more complicated. The speeder was covered in holocamo netting, making it virtually impossible to observe from above, but even so, he was still nervous.
His comrade sat and listened to the Milpol chatter on the radio. There were raids and arrests, orders being sent, patrols being coordinated, but there was no mention of a speeder discovered by a sewerage outlet.
And so they waited. They had to move quickly, before they came for them, but leaving now carried a huge risk of being spotted by a Milpol patrol, with so many copters and gunships flying out over the prairie.
They had supplies and were highly trained commandos; sleeping in a sewer was no great hardship for them. However, they had to leave soon, before they reached her, and…
There had been no celebration. They knew that something had happened, but they didn’t know if the deputy director was dead, injured, or unaffected. That no longer mattered now. The new mission was to escape before they came for them.
As he looked through the scope, watching the buzzing copters, he thought about what would happen next. If the deputy director were dead, there would be initial panic until someone from within the Milpol or Secpol ranks establishes control.
And then they would start looking at what had happened, and who had the plans, and who had access to those plans. Soon enough, she would be found, and eventually, she would tell them everything, and then they would come for them.
They climbed back down into the sewers, pulling the rusty hatch over the opening, and then spent a few hours underground before resurfacing to observe the copter activity and scan the Milpol radio bands.