Chaos Angel Spanner — Chapter 25: The Public Be Damned
Part 6: Terrorists vs. Gangsters
Part 6: Terrorists vs. Gangsters
10 november 2014.
CPMC headquarters. Brinkman stares at the line of grotesque cyborg mercenaries standing before him. “You paid for this?”
Litton grins. “The most dangerous hitmen money can buy. You’re looking at expensive enforcers, Wally. Can’t find any better on the open market.”
“These are grotesque.”
“No more than you are, wolfman.”
Brinkman storms into his face and yells, “At least I’m only a monster part of the time! These are abominations!”
“And that’s exactly what you need to put down this cesspool of commie faggot traitors that persist in denying our God-given dominion over them. They don’t surrender unconditionally, we got them.” Litton gestures toward the mercs. “And if that don’t work, we got drones and nukes. Remember, Wally, we got a revolution to save. The rabble’s our enemy. We gotta put ’em down, starting with their leaders.”
“That would mean the whole Consortium, starting with the Wilder Foundation. That’s a lot of companies, and their unions. We might as well lob nukes.”
“Try nationalizing ’em, Wally. Don’t forget that public management corporations have the legal right to seize any and all property for any or no reason, and that includes entire corporations. If their leaders give us any shit, we’ll send these agents to take ’em out, then COPCO will seize their assets and give ’em to us.”
“Sounds like a clever plan. But we can’t forget the enemy’s got some formidable Players of their own: Thurston Wilder, Philip Reston, Hope Reston, Willa Richter-Thomas, Shira Thomas. They’ve got plans of their own, and we need to make sure we can counter ’em. They beat us on the election. You got that, Litton?”
“I’ll try and keep that in mind. Meanwhile, we got ours.”
11 november 2014.
Bangor squats. On the border with the subdivisions, there is an abandoned Dictel worker housing complex of seven huge apartment buildings now occupied by warring gangs. Officially, one of the high holy days of the cult of Jesus America, Veterans’s Day, is beginning. But at the stroke of midnight, the Socialist Revolutionary Organization show their contempt for America’s imperial war efforts by declaring war on the gangs. The time bombs mark their gambit.
The entire complex blows up in a massive fireball that can be seen across Hood Canal and even in Seattle.
The timers were disposable cellphones; the detonators were Radio Shack parts; the bombs belonged to the gangs themselves.
Bram Rodchenko:Harborside Commons. Team Bremelo and a few friends watch the news and Rodchenko’s communiqué on the screens in the food court. Debbie marvels, “How the hell did they take out all those Slashers in one blow?”
[The SRO commander, his beard flecked with white, speaks in an obviously Seattle accent.]
Attention, narcoterror syndicates. Your reign of terror is about to end. Everybody knows that Wally Brinkman and his Wall Street owners paid you to massacre the people of the city for rejecting the tyranny of Corporatism. We had to strike first. We will strike again, and again and again until you’re zeroed.
We are not terrorists. We are counterterrorists. The police are corrupt and useless. COPCO has no purpose other than defending the tyranny of the ultra-rich against the people. We are GK.
Shira sighs. “Maybe I’ll have to give you a lesson in elemental military strategy. Take out the enemy base, and you cripple the enemy. Hackers call it a single point of vulnerability. Here you had seven gangs in an abandoned barracks, seven big buildings arranged around their battlefield, all playing war nonstop. The Army would have used massed drone bombers; the SRO used stealth agents. Same result.”
“But ain’t the Army got bases? Ain’t that the same thing?”
“They also have jet fighters and weapons emplacements to defend ’em. It’s hard to do that when you’ve got seven gangs squatting one abandoned barracks. You’re actually trained to do what my sister, her husband, and their leader just did.”
“You’re saying, the terrorists are soldiers?”
“Not entirely. Not all the terrorists are soldiers, but all the elite ones are combat veterans, some of ’em decorated, all of whom feel they got screwed by Jesus America. Bram Rodchenko was even part of the SEAL raid on Abbottabad, helping your Uncle Will sink his fangs into the Evil One’s neck. Their quest for revenge is entirely separate from the Populist movement, though they try to hijack it and twist it to their purposes.”
“The enemy of our enemy, in other words, is not necessarily our friend,” Jennifer adds. “You probably know some Conservative Revolutionary youth leaders who don’t realize that, the ones who put their blind faith in the Party and Jesus America rather than their faction and leaders.”
“My infallible gaydar says you have a longtime unrequited crush on one.” Shira leans seductively toward Debbie, making her blush. “Too bad she’s stuck on me, hmm?”
A banana hits the side of Shira’s head; she catches it as it bounces off, then turns to the direction it came from to see an angry Charmian storm up to her. “Shira Thomas, I’m not your girlfriend!”
Leila drapes herself seductively on Charmian and purrs, “Of course you aren’t. I am.”
“Ew! Get off me!” Charmian struggles to escape Leila’s embrace, then stares at the ironically smiling beauty.
Polly points at the screens. “Uh-oh! Spanner’s on!” The now familiar eight-bit Eight-Man-clone avatar appears on every monitor.
Spanner:Will Becket stands intimidatingly over the Team Bremelo table. “Is it true that ‘Tory’ means thief?”
Dear Corpos: Don’t you like the Veterans’ Day gift the terrorists just gave you? Just think: the illegal terrorist corporations that profit by selling the morally unforgivable merchandise you have vowed to prohibit forever are getting smashed by the terrorist factions set up by enraged veterans to get revenge against you. They’re mad as hell and refuse to take your shit anymore, and they’re patriotic enough to show their appreciation for you on this holy day created to honor the lives so many working class warriors sacrificed for the sake of our corporate owners’ infinite profits. How do you like them apples?
On a trivial note, “Tory” is Gaelic for thief. Happy Veterans’ Day, Conservatives.
Leila replies, “As a Gaelic speaker, I can confidently tell you that tóire is indeed Gaelic for thief. The labelling of the Conservative Party as tóiridh is indeed accurate, and always has been.”
“I see. Watch out for Rodchenko and his men, ladies. He’s a master of counterterror.”
“I’m afraid counterterror is all he knows,” says Jennifer. “Professional counterterrorists like Rodchenko don’t know people. That’s why they so often alienate the people by turning terrorist against them.”
“How are you so sure there’s any difference among our nation’s enemies?”
“Think of it in Wild West terms, Commander,” says Shira. “The SRO are the posse come to the God-forsaken frontier town of Bangor to purge it of bandits. That’s exactly how Conservative Revolutionaries see themselves. But the Socialist Revolutionaries see the Conservative Revolutionaries as nothing more than bandits themselves, in the employ of Rockefeller, Harriman, and Pinkerton. All too often, the posses turn into bandits or, what’s even worse, tyrants. It’s happened all over the West. The people get caught in the middle and find themselves forced to defend themselves against both sides if they wanna survive. Populism’s always been about the little guys getting justice for themselves when the big guys run roughshod over ’em. In fact, Populism gave Cascadia and its predecessors their democratic constitutions intended to keep the big guys in check. That’s your lesson in civilian politics for today, soldier.”
Will crosses his arms. “I thought the Revolution was intended to do away with politics.”
“All it did was replace democratic politics with archaic court politics. That’s why the factions and syndicates are celebrating this Veterans’ Day with a bang.”
Downtown Bangor. Through the wide streets and vast parking lots of the strip-mall district the city of Bangor’s founders were proud to call a downtown, biker punks rampage unchecked. The remaining businesses are closed, the civilians have fled for their lives, gangsters blaming their rivals for the bombing shoot at each other and kill several.
The SRO militants have not left. As soon as they detonated the gang hangouts, they took positions on the downtown roofs. They emerge at the building edges to lob bombs and fire rockets at the warring gangs. Some gangsters are lucky or well positioned enough to get away; others aren’t.
Sparks and Kowalczyk watch the battle from the protection of their COPCO van hidden at the edge of the battlefield. Kowalczyk marvels, “I never thought I’d see terrorists go vigilante.”
“You keep forgetting this is America. The posse’s come to Dodge to clean out the bandits. Classic Wild West. Better yet, they’re back from fighting Indians, and in this day and age I don’t mean Native Americans.”
Someone taps on the driver’s side window. Sparks turns to find Talia pointing a rifle at him. Kowalczyk whistles. Sparks rolls down the window.
“What are you doing here?” she demands.
“Just watching you soldiers do to the bandidos what we lawmen ain’t. Since lawmen are useless in this situation, we decided we’d just sit back and watch. Who knows, we might even learn something.”
“Just don’t interfere.”
“No problem, soldier.” He rolls his windows back up. Talia takes a few steps back, then turns to run back to the battlefield.
“What’s with her?” asks Kowalczyk.
“You haven’t seen Sergeant Espinoza’s file yet? Her unit just beat the Taliban when the Revolution happened and they found they had to answer to Dictel and the mining cartel. She was just one of many soldiers who got dishonorably discharged for insubordination, right in the middle of the Afghan winter. A lot of ’em turned guerrilla. The SRO explained.”
“They do cyberterror?”
“No, they’re strictly military minded. They got nothing to do with Anonymous, or the Russian and Chinese cyberagents.”
“Nice to know.”
They watch as the SRO crusade against the criminal gangs of the Bangor slums the same way they battled the Islamist guerrillas of Afghanistan. “Watch carefully, Stu,” says Sparks. “This is exactly what the Party, wielding Dictel and COPCO as its weapons, want to do to the people of the state of Cascadia.”
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[Revision 1, 12/11/11.]
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