The End of All Things: The Third Instalment Read Online Free PDF Page A

got dropped,” Powell reminded him. “Although Lambert’s right. If they were just going to drop the building, why the hell did they send us in?”
    “They sent us in before someone in the Kyoto security upper ranks remembered a CDF ship could level a building in a single shot, apparently,” I said.
    “We could have been killed.”
    “I guess they decided we were safe.”
    “ That’s reassuring,” Powell said.
    “At least it wasn’t our idea,” Lambert said. “That girl hated us enough. And if she hated us, she had to have learned it from someone else.”
    “It wasn’t our idea, but one of our ships did the honors,” I said. “I don’t think that distinction would matter much to her or to anyone else. We’re on the hook for this as much as the Kyoto government.”
    “Did you get anything on the sniper?” Salcido asked me.
    “Rana Armijo. Sixteen standard. Parents apparently in deep with the rebellion. No sign of them. Either they’re gone or the Kyotans already have them.”
    “So she becomes a martyr for the rebellion,” Lambert said. “The government rounds up everyone in her apartment block, she stays behind, starts taking out security officers, and is so successful they have to drop the building on her head. It’s a good story.”
    “It won’t do her much good,” Powell said.
    “That’s how it’s supposed to work for martyrs.”
    “So what now?” Salcido asked.
    “We’re done here,” I said. “There’s ongoing rebel action in Sakyo and Yamashina, but the Tubingen has other orders. It’s someone else’s problem now.”
    “It was already someone else’s problem,” Lambert said. “Then we made it ours, too.”
    “Don’t start, Lambert,” Powell said. “It’s especially tiring today.”
    “If it’s tiring for you, think how it feels to them.”

PART THREE
    A Thursday this time, and we’re called upon to manage a protest.
    “I’m not going to lie, I’m really curious to see these things in action,” Lambert said, as the hurricane funnels were set up around the Colonial Union administrative building in Kyiv.
    The administrative building itself was a skyscraper deposited in the center of a hectare of land in the downtown district. The entire hectare was a flat plaza, featureless except for a single piece of abstract sculpture. That sculpture was currently populated by several protesters, as was a large chunk of the plaza. The skyscraper was ringed by Kyiv policemen and CDF soldiers and hastily assembled metal barriers.
    The protesters had not taken it into their heads to try to rush the skyscraper, but it was early in the day yet. Rather than wait for the inevitable, and the inevitable casualties to both protester and security forces, the Colonial Union had decided to employ the latest in less than lethal protest management: the hurricane funnel. One was being placed directly in front of my squad.
    “It looks like an Alp horn,” Powell said, as it was placed and started expanding out and up.
    “Alpenhorn,” I said. I was a musician in my past life.
    “That’s what I said,” Powell replied, and then turned to Salcido. “You’re the weapon nerd here. Explain this.”
    Salcido pointed up, at the very long tube snaking up to the sky, now about two hundred feet up. “Air gets sucked into the thing from up there. It gets drawn down and accelerated as it goes. It hits the curve, gets an extra push, and out it goes that way.” He waved in the general direction of the protesters. “We set a perimeter length, and anytime one of them tries to get past it, the funnel ramps up a breeze and blows them down.”
    “Which should be fun to see,” Lambert said. “Although these things are awfully inefficient, if we’re talking real crowd control. It’s like we’re daring them to try to cross that line.”
    “They’re not supposed to be efficient,” I said. “They’re supposed to send a message.”
    “What message? ‘We’ll huff and we’ll puff and we’ll blow