“So, why no… ?” Elgars stopped frustrated by her inability to speak clearly.
“Well, ‘less guns, less crime,’ right?” Wendy said bitterly. “It’s part of the contract on the Sub-Urbs; they are zero weapons zones. When you get inprocessed, they take away all your weapons and hold them at the armory, which is up by the main personnel entrance. If you leave, you can reclaim them.”
“So, leave,” Elgars said slowly and carefully.
“Haven’t you been following the news?” Wendy asked bitterly. “With all the rock-drops the Posleen have been doing it’s the beginning of a new ice-age up there. It’s a record low practically every day; you can’t move for the snow and ice from September to May. And there aren’t any jobs on the surface; the economy is shot. Then there’s feral Posleen.”
“F’r’l?” Elgars asked.
“The Posties breed like rabbits,” Wendy said. “And if they’re not around a camp, they drop their eggs at random. Most of them are fertile and they grow like crazy. Since there’s been landings all over, there have been eggs scattered almost across the entire U.S. Most of the feral ones can survive in the wild quite well, but they flock to humans for food. They’re as omnivorous as bears and have absolutely no fear of humans; they tend to attack any person that they run into. So it’s like having rabid Bengal tigers popping up all over.”
Wendy shook her head sadly. “It’s bad down here, but it’s hell up there.”
Elgars looked at her sideways. The way that Wendy had said that didn’t ring quite true. After a moment she frowned and nodded uncertainly. “Joi’ s’cur’ty?”
Wendy shook her head angrily at that, striding along the corridor. “I don’t have the ‘proper psychological profile,’” she snarled. “It seems that I’m ‘uncomfortable with my aggressive tendencies’ and ‘present an unstable aggression profile.’ It’s the same excuse that was used for why I couldn’t join ground forces. Catch-22. If you’re a woman and you think you’d make a good soldier, you must be unstable. Same for security.”
“S’crazy,” Elgars said. “No women ’n s’cur’ty?”
“Oh, there are women,” Wendy answered with a snort. “They wouldn’t have a security department if there weren’t; all the males that aren’t Four-F are in the Ground Forces or buried. But the women in security are ‘comfortable with their aggressive tendencies.’ ”
“Huh?” Elgars said as they came to another cross corridor. “Whuh that m’n?”
“Well, what do we have here?” a voice asked from the side as an alarm began to beep. “If it isn’t Wendy Wee. And who’s your friend? And why don’t you keep your hands where I can see them. And put the bag on the ground and step away from it.”
Wendy moved her hands away from her side as the three guards spread out. All three were wearing blue vaguely military looking uniforms, bulky body-armor and ballistic helmets. Two were carrying pulser guns, short barreled weapons vaguely resembling shotguns that threw out small, electrically charge darts. The darts transmitted a high-voltage shock that would shut down the human, or Posleen, nervous system. The leader, a stocky female, had a charge-pistol dangling from her hand. The GalTech weapon projected a line of heavy-gas that acted as a charge carrier for a massive electrical field. The weapon was short ranged, but it was capable of penetrating all but the most advanced armor.
“Hello, Spencer,” Wendy said with a thin smile. “My ‘friend’ is Captain Elgars. And she is authorized, as you know, to carry whatever she wants.”
“I could give a shit what you say, Cummings,” said the leader. “I’ve got you dead to rights smuggling guns.” Spencer turned to Elgars and gestured at the bag with her charge-pistol. “Put down the bag and step away from it or you’re going to get a taste of my little friend.”
Wendy glanced over at Elgars and blanched. The captain was still as a statue, but it was not, by any stretch of the imagination, a stillness of fear. The redhead was staring at the guard like a basilisk and it was clear that she was on the ragged edge of violence.
“Annie, put down the bag and show the nice guard your ID, slowly,” Wendy said.
“Shut up, Cummings,” snarled the guard sergeant stepping up to Elgars and tapping her on the chest with the pistol. “Are you going to put down that bag or are you going to drop it ’cause you’re twitching on the floor?”
Elgars slowly looked down at the pistol then held the bag out to the side and dropped it. As it fell she reached up and twisted the pistol out of the sergeant’s hand. A short flurry of hand motions had the weapon in nine pieces which she scattered across the corridor. The captain reached down as the guard started to draw her truncheon and seized Spencer’s wrist in a bone crushing grip.
The guard sergeant froze, caught by pit-bull-like grip and the lambent green fire of the captain’s eyes; the two other guards didn’t have a clear shot since their team-leader’s body was in the way. Elgars slowly reached into her hip pocket and extracted her ID pack. She flicked it open a handspan away from the struggling guard’s eyes and cocked an eyebrow. “Now, are y’all gonna put them sticks away, or am I gonna stick ’em up yo’ ass?” she said in a soft, honey-smooth southern voice.
“Let go of my wrist,” Spencer ground out, wrenching at the viselike grip.
“Tha’s ‘Let go of mah wrist, ma’am’, ” Elgars whispered, leaning into the guard sergeant so that she could whisper in her ear. “And if you don’t quit struggling Ah’m going to feed you yo’ arm, one inch at a tahm.”
“Let go of my wrist, ma’am,” the guard ground out. As the pressure from Elgars’ grip increased instead, she ground out a: “Please.”
Elgars relented and Spencer finally wrenched her arm away. She shook her wrist, trying to get some circulation back in her hand, and it was clear that she would prefer to just leave the confrontation. But her pistol was scattered all over the ground. She looked up at the captain, who over-topped her by at least an inch.
Wendy smiled brightly and stepped behind Elgars to pick up the bag. “We’ll just be going now,” she said, grabbing Elgars’ arm. “Right, Captain?”
Elgars leaned forward and looked carefully at the guard’s nametag. “Yes,” she said softly. “O’ course. Ah’m sure we’ll be seein’ quaht a bit of each othah, won’t we, Sarn’t… Spencer is it?”
“Of… of course, ma’am,” Spencer answered. “Sorry about the misunderstanding.”
“This is one of the cafeterias,” Wendy said turning off of a main corridor into a large antechamber. There was a series of roped off “mouse mazes” leading to four open blast doors. Beyond the blast doors was a long, low room with a fairly standard cafeteria line down the middle. There was a stack of trays, cups, a beverage dispensing unit with a limited selection, utensils and sundries and a short section of food. The food consisted of rather bland dishes, weighted heavily towards starches.
Wendy took a tray and moved down the line accepting a helping of corn and a small piece of badly overcooked pork from the unsmiling servers. Elgars followed, carefully mimicking her choices.
At the end of the line Wendy turned to a small box mounted near eye height. The screen lit up and identified her correctly then scanned her plate. It noted that she had received their midday ration and indicated a large calorie balance.
Wendy gestured at that. “Unless you’re a real pig, you can make it on less than the calories that you’re allotted every day. You can transfer a percentage of it to somebody else’s account and you get increases for community service. It’s the main medium of trade in the Urb.”