Chapter Seven - Big Gun Politics

“If given the option between being poor and rich, choose to be rich. That’s what my father used to tell me. He was a good man, worked hard for what he earned.

As I grew up, I learned that there was more to it than that, especially here in America. This land has the greatest legal system in the world. It’s one of the easiest to buy your way into.

Remember though, it’s a legal system, not a justice system.”

--Mister P.J. Vermille, of River Heights, 2034

***

I came to a stop and crossed my arms as I took in the scene.

Of the three people arguing, one was clearly a samurai. An inexperienced, new one, but he was undoubtedly like me and Gomorrah. It wasn’t even just the strange gear he had on that gave him away. There was just... something about the way he stood that said that he was a weirdo and had no business being anywhere near anyone in charge.

The other two were entirely different. A woman in the kind of business-chic that screamed ‘high-end-secretary’ and a man in a square-cut corpo-military outfit, with a plastic pistol strapped to one hip and the obligatory complement of low-ranked mooks standing at attention in the background. A few people had noticed us, but no one was telling the three of them.

The way everyone was milling around felt like kids watching their caretakers having a nasty argument. It would probably have been best for morale if this circus happened behind closed doors.

“I’m going in,” I told Gomorrah as I turned on my stealth systems and faded away. “Stay around here?”

“Sure,” Gomorrah said. “I’m going to go check on the civilians, try to get an idea of how things are organised on the ground. Call me when you need help.”

“Thanks,” I said before walking over to the morons fighting in public.

“We can’t allow the defences around River Heights to fall,” the secretary-lady was saying. “Just in the last twelve hours we’ve lost seven guardsmen, and the Villmont estate had to be abandoned which required that we move our defences back. Restoring the estates later will be a significant expense.”

The samurai guy shook his head. “We can’t, we barely have enough here. General Wilkinson can barely spare ten soldiers per entrance, and our green-tags aren’t able to keep the antithesis at bay on their own.”

The big army guy, who I guessed was this General Wilkinson because I wasn’t a moron about reading context clues, nodded along. “We are severely undermanned at the moment,” he said. “We might be receiving reinforcements, but not for another two to three days. My men can hold out for that long, but they will need some R&R soon or the constant stress will reduce their effectiveness. Also, we are losing too many around the River Heights area.”

“Look, we’re doing what we can,” the samurai said. He was a skinny, rather tall guy. Lanky, I think, was the right term for it. He had to be Sprout, the plant-specialist samurai. His gear was very... civilian. Jeans with a plain t-shirt under a vest covered in pockets. He had a sort of gardening belt hanging low to his side with some handles sticking out of it and what was obviously a handgun shoved into it.

He looked entirely out of his depth.

The secretary woman sensed that weakness and pounced. “If Downtown wants River Heights' continued protection, then we expect Downtown to provide compensation. We’re already sharing supplies and allowing the people here to profit from our hard work. The least that can be done is diverting more help to us. Maybe we can renegotiate the samurai rotation?”

“Rotation?” I asked as I shut down my stealth gear.

The three jumped and spun around. I was sitting on one of those half-walls that malls loved to use to divide up their food courts.

“Yo,” I said with a hand raised to wave. “So, Sprout, who’re your friends here?”

The young man (who was a few years my senior, but it didn’t feel like it at the moment, not when it looked like he had a spine made of canned spaghetti) straightened up and nodded to me. “You’re miss Stray Cat?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Oh, uh, hello,” he replied. “These are Miss Baker, she’s representing River Heights.”

“The preeminent community in Burlington,” she replied with a winning smile. “We’re a small, private group who are working to assist the rest of the city in its time of need.”

I nodded. “Okay. And you’re General Wilkinson?”

“Yes ma’am,” he said. I had the impression he was holding back from saluting. “I command the Vermont Militia’s local branch.”

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“Nice, nice,” I said. “Right, I’ve just arrived. I read the reports thoroughly, but I like seeing things for myself. What’s the situation here?”

“We’re... surviving,” Sprout said. “But it’s getting harder. There’s only three of us and the antithesis are getting stronger while we’re losing people.”

They were caught on the wrong end of exponential growth then. Maybe Gomorrah and I could make a difference there. We were both pretty good at making a mess. “I think that’ll be our first priority then, making sure that defences hold up. Then we’ll see about heading out and culling any local hives.”

“Oh,” Sprout said. He looked a bit wide-eyed at the idea. He was real green.

“If you’re here, that means we now have four samurai?” Miss Baker said. She sounded pretty excited by the idea. “We can have two at River Heights now.”

I raised a hand. “What the fuck’s a River Height?”

“As I said, it’s the premiere living space in Burlington.”

I turned to Sprout, who squirmed. “It’s the nice part of the city? A few mansions all placed close together. It’s a gated community.”

“How many people live there?” I asked.

“Twenty-six families,” Miss Baker answered. “With additional staff, of course.”

“Give me a solid number,” I said. “How many people are there now?”

“Nearly six-hundred in all, ma’am, including a fifth of my men and logistical support crews,” the General replied.

I blinked. “So one in five of our best-trained troops are protecting a couple dozen homes?” I asked, just to be sure.

“Yeah,” Sprout said. He sounded ashamed of it all.

“Okay, and how many people are in the downtown area?”

“Downtown had sixty thousand people. Right now, we’re not entirely certain. A number of people evacuated from around the city to here, where it’s safer,” the General said. “We are working on a census to better distribute supplies and work.”

“Right,” I said. “Any reasons we shouldn’t abandon the River Heights area and relocate the troops here? Sounds like they’ll be more help defending the greater number of people.”

“River Heights is very defensible,” Miss Baker said. “A number of the homes have tall fences and automated defence mechanisms that can’t just be moved. Not to mention the historical value of the location.”

I blinked, then I raised a finger and texted Myalis. “This is bullshit. Right?”

It does seem that a few people are living quite comfortably in a location not too distant from the centre of the city. Cross-referencing family names and local business owners suggests that a number of them own a lot of property within the city.

So, rich fucks who’d built a small defensible kingdom for themselves, and now that shit hit the fan they were staying in their castles.

Honestly, I didn’t mind that too much, but they were interfering with the protection going to the rest of the city. I hummed, then spoke up. “We have a samurai over at River Heights?” I asked.

“We do,” Sprout said. “Johnny. He’s there now. It’s his turn.”

“Right, I’m going to replace him for a bit. General, I’ll be texting you some information. Sprout, follow me.”

I fell off the wall I was perched on and started walking deeper into the mall, the newer samurai jumped to keep up.

As soon as we were in another section of the multi-story mall, I spoke up. “How are things?” I asked. “Don’t hold back, I can handle bad news.”

“Not great, probably not terrible,” he said. “I... need time to set up and be useful, but we’ve been running around putting out fires all day for the past few days. Johnny got us some pills that make it so that we don’t need sleep. Without those I’d have crashed.”

“And the other samurai?”

“Manic?” he asked. “She does her own thing. I’d complain, but I really can’t, she’s killing more aliens than Johnny and I together. She doesn’t really do orders or anything.”

“And the local politics?” I asked.

He winced. “Complicated.”

“I’ll be taking over those then,” I said with an evil smile. “I’m good at politics, or so I’ve been told.”

“That would be a relief,” he said. “Look, River Heights are... a pain to deal with, but we kind of need them right now. They control payroll for the militia and run nearly half the businesses in this city. I worked for them until two days ago, I guess.”

“Hey, don’t you worry. I’ll handle this with grace and decorum.”

Once I was done, the rich morons would be gracing us with all of their goods and decorums.

***