Crews Chip

It had seemed like a good idea at the time, it really did.

After that spectacular extraction from a state fair, we all were racking our brains out for something to top that.

And, at first, I managed to, and, to be clear, we managed to re-use the trick more than once.

Think of it... where can you find a bunch of people with a good mix of the sexes so that any volunteer we pick up will have a good selection?

Oh, sure, there are plenty of ways to arrange this, and they'd all been tried, though you really can't scale up very well. The original estimates of being able to evac up to 30% of the Earth's population fell flat on the fact that we had to be circumspect about extractions. We might, if we were very lucky, manage 3%, unless we could scale the whole effort up... but some things are not scalable.

The state fair approach-- after the third time-- had to be given up, simply because there were opportunists trying to weasel their way in. The fourth try garnered us a loss of over eight hundred volunteers and a whole platoon of Marines when some group of criminals decided to gun 'em down and try to demand that we lower our standards.

I have to admit that watching them arrive in vacuum and then let the orbits the bodies ended up in decay was pleasant, though, really, my buddy Holly would have preferred to keep them alive longer so they could feel the heat of re-entry.

And I thought I was cruel. Holly kicked butt...

The problem with the whole state fair trick-- or circus, or concert, or... you name it... was that there was no screening for weapons.

And, after one experiment, it was decided that stunning a whole crowd from altitude and then sorting them out, while a far safer approach, didn't lend itself to sustainability. None of the volunteers we collected that way were happy when they found they had little choice, so the "slut" trading was annoying to us.

Then came my idea.

We started small...

Confederacy Marines... ummm... stand out in a crowd. We may have an easier time hiding when surrounded by football-- American football, not real football-- players, or, maybe, even basketball players.

In any case, it has gotten harder and harder over time to not be recognized. Gracie Hart's fictional troubles fitting in to the background weren't as bad as ours since there were people-- usually connected to organized crime, though some religious folks, too-- gunning for us, trying to spoil the defense of the earth.

Whenever we got interference, we tended to choose to act a little bit like the Sa'arm do-- we swarm in and beat the shit out of those treasonous bastards that would be happy to write the epitaph for the Human race.

So, nowadays, we get some of the squids to do things for us, like dropping off transport terminals in "good" places where we want to make a pick-up.

I arrived with my platoon, Holly at my side, carrying a big fucking gun modeled on the BFG-9000 from Doom. I had my stinger ready on arrival and my side-arm in its holster. I saw one fellow twitch as he saw us materialize and I zapped him, and, given how the ferry boat was packed, the person behind and on either side of him slumped.

The rest of the squad arrived from the terminus and took up positions around me, watching the people nearest us.

Marines, even in shorts and tee shirt, are intimidating to those who've not been either enhanced or augmented. In our uniforms, well, mere mortals back off pretty damn fast.

In armor, with heavy weapons, you don't piss one of us off. You just... don't.

Thank you, Robert Anson Heinlein.

My job, with Holly backing me up, was to take command of the boat.

Oh, sure, they reinforced the door following 9/11, as if I-- or any one of my platoon-- would even need to break stride as we pushed it open.

Never let it be said that human beings, even those of us dedicated to constructive purposes, are immune to the simple pleasure of breaking down a door that "got in the way".

"Good morning, Captain, I'm Lieutenant Jones-- yes, that is my real name-- of the Confederacy Space Marines. We need to you come to a full stop, now. Capisce?"

Another pleasure I get from doing extractions comes from the look on people's faces as I identify myself. The sudden change of color-- turning white, for instance-- does wonders for my ego. This one took a couple of seconds, saluted me, then rang for full stop, yelling out "Aye-Aye!"

I nodded, the suit showing the motion, as I snapped a salute back to him and turned to check Holly, covering my back, facing the door, menacing people with her BFG.

"Thank you, Captain," I said, checking his CAP card via the scanner using the head's up display. Don't let anyone kid you... full armor is a lot easier on our nerves, especially when checking CAP cards. Captain Partridge was a solid 6.7 and was going to have to come with us.

The AI built into my suit flashed my visor red and I heard a gun shot's ricochet into the bridge, starring one of the big windows. The Captain had done the smart thing and dove for the deck as Holly's BFG fired.

Lasers are a pain in the ass when dealing with human targets. We had our stingers, of course... but the BFGs and side-arms fired packets of plasma, reminiscent of the little guns from the Babylon-5 TV series. Whoever had fired into the bridge was dead, his body cooked.

The squad handling the St George pilothouse notified me that they'd taken care of securing it. I called over PFC Chang and had him secure the Whitehall pilothouse as Holly and I moved out on the deck.

We didn't even need an interdiction field to further isolate this boat, so, with a view of New York Harbor, we drifted on the current towards the Narrows as a large dropship arrived to float over us.

Showy, right? But my Captain was a firm believer in not giving anyone the idea that they could have second thoughts about crossing us.

It was time to make the first sweep.

By now the news had gotten around-- letting people know you had a high enough CAP score to leave the earth on your own was getting deadly. This meant that the volunteers could no longer be announced in a crowd because the fucking morons with no chance of leaving tended to exercise the power of denial.

So, with Captain Partridge safely in the pilothouse, Holly's squad marched with me as we walked on down, listening inside our helmets for the tone that identified a volunteer was nearby and the other tone that indicated a projectile weapon was nearby.

I stopped and keyed a circuit, using an induction device to take over the PA system on the boat. "All passengers and crew! If you are carrying a weapon, for whatever reason, get it away from yourself!"

On the conclusion of this loud, and, unlike their usual PA system, clear notice, I noticed a little old lady put her hand bag on the deck and kick it away from herself.

The man who stood up and pulled out his gun got to start aiming it before CPL Kennedy shot him from the other end of the deck.

With this demonstration of our intolerance a lot of the passengers were suddenly finding ways to get guns out of their immediate possession. PFC Williams started collecting the weapons to keep anyone from taking it back, tossing them into a transport terminus. We'd return them.

Now, really, New York City is supposed to be so incredibly anti-gun with a lot of controls... this was a lot of guns we were finding.

But, truly, there's always several jokers in these decks. Once we finished our first sweep... these jokers were dead. Anyone we saw who still had a gun was killed. Even the police had to be disarmed, but, this far along in the evacuation process, they knew enough to not disagree with us. It didn't take too long for all three decks of the Andrew J Barberi to be, well, pacified, and ready for the next phase.

There were ten volunteers on the bridge deck alone, not counting Captain Partridge. The man at the St George end was only a 6.2... so we had him brought to the Whitehall end of the boat to take over as we had these eleven people sort through the rush hour crowd.

Now, realize, I'm from Staten Island, so I knew it would be a bad idea to do this in the afternoon, when people want to go home, but, for all of these people, a delay in getting to work, especially with the excuse of a confederacy pickup, was not something they were all that unhappy with.

Our sweep got us forty two volunteers in one go and over one hundred fifty "concubines". I think a lot of the women (and men) picked by a volunteer to accompany them felt it was a step up from going to work.

We handed back the guns to the people who'd surrendered them, though, while they'd been away, they had all been unloaded, the rounds placed in hard-to-open plastic bags.

Before any of those who were being left behind to go to work could re-arm themselves, we were gone.

All in all a successful effort.

So I led pick-ups on other ferries, starting with the Cape May ferry, then the bigger ferries around Europe and Asia. Some of those ships were scary and I was glad my armor had a built in anti-grav that would allow me to look like I was walking on water.

Sadly, those with an axe to grind against the Confederacy-- and the extraction teams-- found it easy to set up ambushes on various ferries.

I appeared on a ferry on San Francisco Bay and had to walk to Alcatraz with my platoon when the boat was blown up under us, and, let me tell you, that was rather more work than I preferred. When we got there-- barely ahead of a fleet of small pleasure craft-- we opened up a terminus and left.

So much for that idea...

A Cruise Ship, however, was different. Holly suggested we go on a cruise for a vacation... and then we stared at each other as we cuddled. Her remark catalyzed both of us.

I love it when my partner can think like I do.

Y'see, for security reasons, passengers and luggage are screened for weapons... so a cruise ship already has some of the attributes needed to make an extraction more survivable.

Oh, sure, we had to do some picking and choosing... and even putting CAP sensors on the main entrances to each ship that we were looking to snarf people from, so we could choose ships with the best mix of men and women for our needs.

And, yeah, each ship's crew had more than enough volunteers, too, who would get to leave.

Also, given the tendency for us to materialize in the middle of a fire fight, we changed tactics.

We had a sensor suite installed in the bridges of these big ships so we could see the command crew's reaction to our arrival in our of drop ship.

Even a US Navy task force with a super-carrier would not choose to engage us, so this cruise ship didn't even take evasive action, even though the Captain was worried about our intentions. His XO reminded him that the passengers may not be pleased with the disturbances caused by any sudden change of direction, so, instead, he rang down for 1/4 speed.

He could have stayed at full speed, it wasn't like slowing down was really going to make it that much easier on the crew of our drop ship.

You may have heard of the Leopard and Panther classes of drop ships and rightly so, but the Bengal was bigger. A lot bigger. Big enough that a C-5A would feel scrawny.

Captain Mittu was an artist, bringing us to within inches of the top deck and floating there as we stepped off as if the ramp was fixed to the ship below us. Once the whole company stepped off, our ride here lifted and took up a position aft of the ship.

Orders came down from our CO to carry on with the extraction as he gave the captain of this ship his orders.

There had been more people on the Staten Island Ferry boat, but, then, that much smaller boat didn't need to have room for all of those thousands of people to sleep, much less eat or lounge about. This meant that a lot of the people were in cabins.

A lot of the people still in their cabins were either sleeping off a hangover or had wandered off for some morning delight with their spouse or a reasonable facsimile thereof.

And, no, we didn't break down doors. No, we were given a widget to pick locks which Holly dubbed a "sonic screwdriver" which got her such a blank stare from me that she broke out laughing before explaining it.

Getting the Verandah deck was, well, fun, as we rousted out the people hidden away. The six men and women in a daisy chain startled me, by the way, though I think they were far more startled to find a big hulking Marine in a combat suit. I figured these folks-- none of whom had a CAP score over 5-- would be good picks for one of the hundred volunteers on this ship.

I opened the door to a handicapped suite and discovered a small oriental woman trying to get ready, caught in the process of putting on her prosthetic legs. She looked up at me, scared. My HUD told me she had a CAP score of 6.3.

Marines have historically been an unimaginative lot, but, given the many traits needed for a good CAP score, we CSM Marines have to have both imagination and initiative. Another asset that adds to one's CAP score is empathy, too.

She didn't have much in the way of other clothing, being up to the usual "available for extraction" dress code, as were many others on this ship.

All that didn't matter, for I saw her eyes...

"May I help you, ma'am?" I asked, automatically.

She blushed and shook her head, just as one of her legs slid from the bed and fell to the floor. I walked over to her and picked it up off the floor and proceeded to help her strap it on.

Yes, I'm not kidding, even in full armor, with machines to magnify my strength, I'm one of the lucky ones, able to perform some incredibly delicate work with my "hands".

By the time she was able to stand on her prosthetic legs, I saw tears coursing down her face, and she sobbed out, "Why should I bother?"

I sat down on the other bed, reaching for her hands, and, using my most gentle touch, held them. "What's wrong, miss?"

"My legs," she answered, in between her sobs. "No one will want me."

I laughed and read her name from her CAP card in my HUD, saying "If you'll settle for me, Dawn... I'll take you. I already want you."

Holding a lovely woman on your lap while encased in battle armor, even the light variety, is not as satisfying as when naked... or even clothed. My hands, still in the armor, stroked her hair, rubbed her back, showing her as much of the man within the suit as I could.

"Dawn, I have to get moving... so, please, let me up..."

Well... she didn't. So I stood up with her in my arms. Her hands reached and she shed the artificial limbs we had just secured, holding on to my suit just before my right arm got into position to hold her to my hip. Again the lack of sensation was missed...

The other three cabins... well...

Dawn really would have preferred if she hadn't been with me for these as we had to wake up the drunks sleeping it off after whooping their cookies into the waste-baskets. They were far less appreciative of my interrupting their process of recovery.

Dawn and I went up to the top deck where the air was clear and Dawn's color could get less green even in the sunlight. I also checked in with my Captain who told me to transport Dawn up to the drop ship. "She stays with you, Lieutenant, understand?"

I nodded, happy, and used the closest transport terminus to bring her to the Bengal where I dropped her off with the aid crew. I told them what I wanted as they dropped her into a med-tube before I returned to the cruise ship.

By the time the volunteers were all ready to leave with their allotment of concubines the remaining women were not something to write home about.

Leaving was wonderful but being reunited with Dawn, the third woman for my little harem, made it that much more wonderful. She was still weeks away from having her legs re-genned, meaning she'd spend a lot more time in the med bay, but she and I hit it off better than I would have first believed possible.

And, so, we continued to deal with cruise ships. We'd added extra scanners to the access points on the ships and knew to avoid those which got enough criminals to fuck things up.

As a pick-up artist-- a whole 'nother meaning since contact with the Confederacy-- I didn't like getting into fights unless I could win them. I'd already done pretty well in some engagements with the Sa'arm but never realized...

Holly got along very well with Dawn and both were with me when we got caught by pirates whilst sailing around the Phillipines.

I love having friends, did you know that? Dawn didn't even start to hyper-ventilate when she realized we were cornered between two large power boats and Holly and I fished a set of BFGs out of the cockpit lazarettes, safe in the knowledge that a Bengal with a ready reaction force was wailing its way to us.

We had to duck when I discovered that a plasma burst hitting the ammunition box mounted to one of the .50 cals would cook off the rounds. What the rounds did to the people who were on the same boat as the gun-- which spun around on its mounting-- barely bears asking. The bad news was that they survived the event.

And, no, it's not bad news for us, it was bad news for them.

Holly had cranked up the power on her BFG and had blown more than one hole into the other boat, looking for the fuel tank. Her fourth round in less than 1.5 seconds hit it, too, though diesel fuel isn't as exciting when it ignites as gasoline.

While that boat burned-- spectacularly, I might add-- I did my best to duplicate Holly's finesse with my target.

Dammit, Holly rotated herself and fired two shots-- one to pierce the hull, the other to do internal damage-- and we had a second pyre.

They were nice and smoky fires and so they showed us the wind... so we tacked.

We swapped with a fresh couple of Marines and headed back up to orbit... and home.