Peter Hamilton: Misspent Youth

“I wasn’t planning on being a bitch, Jeff.”

“I’m glad you were here.”

Sue raised her bottle in salute. “Me too.”

“Right then. Let’s get supper sorted, I’m starving. You have got proper food here, haven’t you, not just that delicatessen crap?”

Sue stuck her tongue out at him, and opened the freezer. Jeff chuckled appreciatively as they pulled the packets out.

Once the youngsters were all washed and dressed in clean dry clothes, they sat around the kitchen table and wolfed down sausages and eggs and potato fritters and spaghetti and garlic bread. “Nursery food,” Tim called it contentedly. “Thanks, Mum.”

Listening to all the banter and mild teasing going on around the table was almost like old times for Jeff. With one exception. Annabelle never left his side, and he could return the affection in front of Tim and Sue without any hesitation.

The big screen in the living room was switched to a news stream, and everyone settled in chairs or sprawled over cushions to watch. Jeff sat on the couch with Annabelle curled up beside him. She was nice and warm against his side. He was feeling the cold again, though the others all claimed the room was hot.

By eight-thirty the first squads of the Europol RSF had arrived from Paris, though none had yet been seen emerging from the trains. Cameras showed protestors retreating from the streets around Kings Cross. Rob Lacey appeared in Downing Street’s Rose Garden for a live press statement, claiming that the nihilists wrecking the streets of our great capital would be brought to justice no matter how long it took.

“They always say that,” Simon exclaimed. “Any sort of big crime gets committed, and politicians say exactly the same line every time. They never do it, though.”

By nine o’clock the Metropolitan Police had managed to escort fire engines to most of the blazes away from Docklands. There was coverage of the infernos raging through dozens of buildings, sending flames twisting high into the night sky. News streams competed against one another with dramatic shots of fire crews sending huge jets of foaming water through broken windows and crumbled masonry, trying to stop the spread. Some of the more hysterical reporters were talking about the Second Fire of London, a concept the authorities were eager to quash. Cameras lingered on the somber black ruins of buildings already burned out.

There was no official curfew, although Scotland Yard kept stressing that law-abiding citizens should not go outside.

The Brussels Parliament went into emergency session to debate the civil situation. Furious English EMPs rose to condemn foreign agitators for wrecking the capital, claiming it amounted to an invasion force. Continental EMPs protested at the use of such provocative, racist terms. Shouts and countershouts grew louder; objects were thrown across the seating tiers. The speaker called a recess so that tempers could calm.

At half past ten, more than three and a half thousand RSF officers had arrived at St. Pancras, along with their vehicles and equipment. They began to deploy through the city under the overall command of the Metropolitan Police chief in tandem with Europol’s senior commander. Downing Street and the Home Office made that quite clear from the start, promising their full support for whatever actions were necessary to bring the troublemakers to justice.

The RSF began to establish an isolation cordon around the outside of the University of East London campus. Big water cannon vehicles led the way down streets, high-pressure hoses washing away anyone who stood in front of them. Protestors were slammed to the ground as the water hit them, then pummeled over and over by the jets to lie semiconscious on the side of the road, where RSF officers picked them up and flung them into the prisoner containment carriers that were following the water cannons.

Just after midnight, Rachel and Vanessa announced they’d had enough, and went off to bed, tired by their strange, exhausting day, and depressed by the relentless bad news on the screen. Half an hour later Sue said she’d also seen enough. Jeff agreed, and said good night to the boys who were camping out in the living room.

He and Annabelle used the smaller of the guest bedrooms. They made love with the same kind of desperation and intensity as that first time in the car. Both of them were needy, demanding reassurance and physical comfort from each other. For once he didn’t have to bother with the Viagra; his body was as eager as hers.

They clung together afterward, trembling in relief, thankful that they had each other, both accepting that the day had brought them closer. The small screen on the wall played on silently, casting a wan gray-blue light across their bodies until Jeff finally drew the duvet over them.

In the small hours they saw that twelve thousand RSF troops, Europe’s total contingent, had surrounded the University of East London and Beckton Park. The entire campus was on fire, its elegant circular halls of residence burning like giant brick braziers, faculty buildings haloed by flame as curving roofs buckled and subsided.

The RSF advanced, taking a more continental approach to law enforcement than the exhausted Metropolitan Police they had replaced. Plastic baton rounds were fired directly at protestors, with ranges down to a near-lethal two meters. Any protestor unlucky enough to fall or stumble as the RSF closed in would be surrounded by black-clad officers wielding whiplike truncheons that pounded away until the body stopped moving. English civil rights activists appeared in the news stream studios demanding the arrest of the RSF commanders who authorized such illegal brutality. Snatch squads dragged bleeding, screaming protestors into prisoner containment carriers. Vivid flames from burning buildings and wrecked cars competed with blue and red emergency vehicle strobes to illuminate the shocking scenes in macabre flares of light.

Out of the bedlam in some nameless street in Beckton, the first gunshots of the conflict were heard. A chorus of screams followed. People surged in terror and panic, not knowing which way to flee. The air was thick with missiles and the stench of burning plastic. Two RSF officers lay prone on the pavement. Twenty cameras zoomed in for a close-up, showing the pools of blood slowly expanding across the tarmac. Enraged RSF troops charged into the nearest group of protestors. Lenses backed by light amplification circuitry followed their long steel-webbed truncheons as they rose and fell, striking at unprotected flesh with a hornet’s fury.

In another part of town, more shots were fired. Protestors and RSF lines clashed again and again.

“They have to give us a referendum now,” Annabelle said. “Look what’s happening because they don’t care about us.”

Jeff turned to look at her face; the faint light from the screen revealed only placid features. “That’s not Brussels bureaucrats out there burning the streets.”

“They’re the cause, ultimately. I hate them. Why can’t they leave us alone? Why can’t we make our own decisions? None of those rioters would be allowed in the country if we were in charge of ourselves again.”

“Funny thing. They all hate Brussels as much as we do.”

“Then they should go and burn Brussels down, not London.”

“I expect they will, eventually,” Jeff said.

DAWN REVEALED numerous bodies lying in the street. RSF officers given traitor’s pensions, civilians battered to death. Their ignominy was the same in the wan light. Over a hundred fifty burnt-out buildings sent up thin streamers of rancid smoke as firemen waded through their sodden interiors to begin safe securement procedures. Special courts were convened to process and charge everyone the RSF had arrested. Politicians flocked into early morning news studios, all of them managing to condemn the way Europol had behaved, pointing out how little difference there was between them and the foreign marauders. First cost estimates of the damage to the city were in the range of ten billion euros. Both the mayor and prime minister demanded that the Central Treasury pay for it all; after all, most of the damage had been caused by continental citizens. President Jean Brèque promised to consider any such request sympathetically. Such vagueness was eagerly seized upon by his opponents as further evidence of his administration’s laxity.