Redliners(24)

The poor bastards stared at their surroundings with shell-shocked expressions. "They better get used to it," Abbado said aloud. "I don't know about Bezant, but I've seen a lot of planets that make this look like an R&R base."

The police carried shock batons. They weren't hitting people with them that Abbado saw, but they chivied the civilians with their free hands while the batons waved.

"This ain't right," Glasebrook muttered. "I don't like us being mixed up with it."

"Cheer up, Flea," Abbado said. "This assignment got us off Stalleybrass fast. I wasn't much looking forward to answering questions about a little problem there at a cadre bar."

Abbado had been more relieved than he would admit to his strikers. The morning after they'd shot up the REMFs he'd been asking himself how the hell he'd let himself do that; but at the time, at the time . . .

The police wore riot helmets and breastplates, not a patch on Strike Force equipment for weight but not particularly comfortable in this climate either. That was probably part of the reason they were treating the civilians like animals.

Already some strikers were shepherding ragged columns of civilians toward the starship. "Sarge, we've found ours," Horgen called over the squad push. "We'll see you at the billet. Out."

"The ones we're looking for are going to be the batch that caught the wrong train," Abbado grumbled to Glasebrook. Matushek, the third member of the group, was scanning civilians to match the holographic portraits downloaded into his helmet database.

For the loading, Top Daye had broken 3-3 into fire teams under Horgen and Abbado to get colonists to decks 18 and 19 respectively. Methie and Foley were detached to help the two survivors of Heavy Weapons guide the building support staff.

The apartment block from which the colonists came had eight stories. For the voyage the residents were split into east and west corridors and each group was supposed to be on a single car of the train. If there'd been a little coordination back when the train was loaded the strikers would know exactly which carload went to which deck, but of course that hadn't happened.

"Don't see why civilians can't count the decks up to nineteen themselves," Glasebrook muttered.

"Buck up, Flea," said Abbado. "Nobody's shooting at us, right?"

The monorail shivered for its full length as current to the magnets raised the hangers a hair's breadth from the elevated track. The train accelerated slowly, but it was up to ninety miles an hour by the time the last car whipped past Abbado and his strikers. Suction dragged at them, but the only sound the train made was a hiss and the faint click of couplers.

"Sarge, got them!" Matushek reported. He was standing twenty feet from the others, so he used helmet commo to speak over the nervous chatter of a thousand colonists and their guides. "They were on the other side of the track! Over."

"Fucking typical," Abbado said as he strode toward the clump of fifty-odd stunned-looking civilians. In a louder voice he shouted, "Six West! Form on me!"

The track serving Emigration Port 10 had loading platforms only on one side. Naturally, one of the cars had been misaligned so that its doors were on the wrong side; and naturally, the folks Abbado was looking for were on that car.

The police had noticed the misplaced civilians also. Half a dozen of the nearest strode under the support rail ahead of the strikers. A tall, badly overweight cop bellowed, "Hey you assholes! What're you doing over there? Move it!"

He grabbed the nearest civilian by the arm and jerked her in the direction of the starship. She was carrying bulging net bags, far too much of a load for a woman in her sixties. One of them spilled packages onto the ground.

"That's okay, buddy, we'll take care of this!" Abbado said. His voice was thinner than normal because he was going to be reasonable, he wasn't going to do what he wanted to. "Folks, we're your—"

The cop turned and said, "When I want your opinion, dickhead, I'll—"

Abbado kicked him in the balls. Shit, he'd known he was going to do that all the time.

A cop holding a shock rod faced Glasebrook, who took the rod from him and broke it over his knee. The blue sparks snarling against Flea's left palm stopped when the shaft fractured.

"Fellas, we can let this stop right here," Abbado said. The big cop had settled to his knees. His riot helmet had skewed and now hid his eyes, though the faceshield was up. "Let's do that, right?"

"Yeah," said Matushek. "Let's."

He bobbled a grenade in his open right hand. For an instant Abbado was afraid somebody might not believe the grenade was real or that Matushek really would throw it. A grenade wasn't much of a weapon for close enough to spit, not if you cared about surviving yourself.