Briggs looked down at the floor. “That’s not fair,” he said. It was almost a child’s cry; he had no patience for lawbreakers, but to turn the military loose on them…? “These are not the days of Judge Dredd, sir…”
“No,” Langford agreed. He nodded towards the country-wide display; they hadn’t been able to take over a police station as a general headquarters yet, not with all the chaos surrounding the city. “What choice is there?”
“Deal with the riots, then,” Briggs said. He scowled. “Are you married?”
Langford shook his head. “I am,” Briggs said. “It was a long and happy marriage, and we rarely argued, even if we had some quarrels over money. We were talking about quitting, you know; we were talking about leaving and heading out into the country somewhere, because the cities were no longer safe. Since the missiles fell, I have been unable to talk to her and… God, I don’t know what’s happened to her…”
Langford winced. “I never found the right woman,” he said. Briggs had to smile. “Use the secure communications net; give her a quick call, once everything is set in motion here. Another reason to put an end to the chaos as soon as possible; once we end the violence, we will be able to reunite thousands of families.”
Briggs nodded.
Sergeant Christopher Roach had no sympathy for the rioters at all, not after losing several of his people to snipers on the first day. Roach, who had found himself commanding a scratch company considering of seventy soldiers who had been scattered and separated from their units, had spent two days securing the Houses of Parliament — or what was left of them — before being issued new orders. They were to join the force sealing off Brixton, and then end the rioting, whatever it took.
His orders, he was pleased to see as his men deployed, along with armed policemen and riot control squads, had been written by someone who actually understood the tactical realities of combat. Only a politician could come up with orders that included the contradiction of an armed advance and no casualties on either side, but the orders from the new government were refreshingly clear. He was to use limited force unless his men faced deadly force, in which case he was to return fire and crush the insurgents. Roach, like many other infantrymen, had found himself facing the possibility that one day a new government might order them to put an end to the lawlessness on the streets; he had welcomed the thought after yobs had killed his granny instead of finding something useful to do with their lives.
“Sergeant Roach, reporting,” he said, to a harassed looking police officer. The other policemen seemed either pleased that the heavily-armed soldiers were there, or nervous around them, regarding them as more violent than the criminals they frequently had to arrest. “We’re ready to move in as soon as possible.”
“And not a moment too soon,” the officer said. Roach nodded; he could hear shooting from the distance, some of it seemingly aimed into the sky. The gangs were at war; some of them would have noticed the police cordon and laughed at it. What could the police do to them. “Those folks want to get back home…”
He cocked a finger at several dozen people, waiting and watching the soldiers with nervous eyes. They were mainly Indian or Africa; Brixton had been an African area before a careless government had also organised thousands of Indians to move in as well, perhaps in the unspoken hope that they would kill each other off. Roach had no doubt that the last government — which had died along with Downing Street — would have screwed the immigrants if it could have done; the British people had been growing less and less tolerant of immigration over the years. They wouldn’t be allowed to return yet, he had been told; everyone who came out alive would be held in a makeshift detention camp until their identities could be discovered and their future decided.
Three helicopters flew overhead, police helicopters; Roach admired their bravery. The police knew — they had to know — that some people on Britain’s streets had access to SAM missiles; they’d been used to shoot down at least a dozen airliners. The police pilots were risking their lives in aircraft Roach wouldn’t have taken into harm’s way if it could have been avoided, but they carried out their duty faithfully. They deserved better than the scorn of the population.
“THIS IS THE POLICE,” loudspeakers bellowed, the racket setting the birds to flight. The thunderous voice echoed across all of the area; everyone in Brixton would hear it. “MARTIAL LAW HAS BEEN DECLARED. COME OUT WITH YOUR HANDS HELD HIGH OR RISK BEING SHOT. THIS AREA IS UNDER THE PATROL OF ARMED MEN! ANYONE CARRYING A WEAPON WILL BE SHOT! THERE WILL BE NO FURTHER WARNING!”
Roach turned to the officer. “Do you expect any response?”
“There are people in there who don’t dare to leave,” the officer said, bitterly. “The real hard men won’t surrender and won’t let anyone else from their groups leave; we might have some people coming out, but they won’t be serious hard cases.”
Roach waited. A handful of women, of all races and creeds, were inching their way out, keeping their hands firmly in the air. One of them crumpled as a shot rang out; Roach snapped an order to his sniper as the young man carrying a rifle took aim at a second woman. A shot rang out and the enemy sniper fell to the ground, dead.
“Nice shooting,” Roach commented. The surviving women fled towards them and the police met them, escorting them to one of the waiting pens where they would be held until they could be moved to the detention camp. More were coming now, women and a handful of men; they kept their hands in the air. One woman, completely naked, drew appreciative whistles from some of the soldiers; Roach asked and discovered that she had thought that she would be mistaken for a suicide bomber unless she approached naked. She was quickly loaned a coat and sent to the pens. “I think that…”
More shooting flickered out in the area. “That's the gangs about to start shooting, I think,” the officer said. He glared down at a terminal he held in his hands. “The bastards smashed all of the cameras as soon as mob rule appeared on the streets.”
Roach felt his teeth grind together. “Give them the final warning?”
The Police officer muttered into his radio. “THIS IS THE POLICE,” the helicopters bellowed again. “ARMED OFFICERS ARE ENTERING NOW. ANY RESISTANCE WILL BE CONSIDERED A CRIMINAL ACT AND PUNISHED UNDER MARTIAL LAW. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!”
Roach lifted an eyebrow. “You have no idea,” the officer said, “just how good it feels to be able to make clear statements like that.”
Roach nodded. “Put the engines in gear, lads,” he ordered. “It’s time to move.”
The Floid vehicles had been hastily retooled for the Sudan when it seemed likely that intervention was going to be required, but had never sent there as the famine and uprising had happened before they were ready to deploy. They had then considered white elephants by the Ministry of Defence, who had shoved all of the fifty production models into a warehouse near London and forgotten about them. A soldier who had driven one remembered them and mentioned it to his commander; a quick check had revealed that the warehouse had escaped harm and the Floids had been quickly recovered. They had been built for city-warfare; it would take a heavy RPG to damage them even slightly, while they were armed with non-lethal weapons as well as machine guns. If the… rebels, insurgents, criminals, whatever they were… had something that could damage them, Roach intended to call for a helicopter strike rather than risk his men.