Chapter Fifty-Four – It’s fun to play with the P.M.C.

Chapter Fifty-Four – It’s fun to play with the P.M.C.

“As a soldier you need to be aware that you are NOT a mercenary. You are a part of a greater fighting force whose goals are to defend the people and integrity of your nation. You are a fighter for justice, not mere credits.”

–US3 Army Propaganda, 2042

***

I hugged my bike close, the rumble of its engine sending a bassy vibration through me, which was nice. I was still feeling fresh and tingly from my shower, but the flight was giving me time to recentre myself.

What was coming up was probably not going to be fun and games.

I got a warning from the city’s automated driving systems as I shot past the exterior wall of the city. Myalis calmed them down for me, probably told whatever automated AA they had to chill out as well.

Flying past the security of the wall wasn’t safe, but I figured it wasn’t all that dangerous either. Not as long as I was moving quick and staying far off the ground. Anything that could attack me would have to come from the air, and so close to the city it would have been gunned down a while ago.

I just wanted to see things with my own eye and I figured it was worth the risk.

The northern wall stretched across the city. There was a river here, entering from the west and leaving out of the east. The main part of it was buried under the megastructure of the city proper, but some parts of the lake to the west were visible from my altitude.

The wall circled around the entire northern part of the city. A flat grey of concrete and metal, with evenly spaced towers along its length.

It would have been impossibly imposing from the ground, but from up here, it wasn’t quite that impressive.

For one thing, the wall wasn’t that straight. It didn’t just curve out to encompass the swell of the city, but it had small sections that pushed further out, or that were uneven to account for crooked terrain.

The suburbs around this part of New Montreal were still lived in, even those beyond the wall. Probably because the wall wasn’t the only wall in the area.

There was a second, much less impressive set of fortifications some ways out from the main wall. “How far is that second wall from the big one?” I asked.

The spacing isn’t even, but the furthest section is four kilometres away.

That was a fair bit of space, especially since the inner section followed almost the entirety of the northern wall. “Why was this section left here?” I asked with a gesture to the space.

I believe because some four million people live here. There are several small cities growing out from New Montreal. To the west is Deux Montangnes, then Saint Coke of Cola, Nimbleland, Rosemere. You’re currently above Nimbleland. The secondary wall meets the main wall not too far from where we are. But there’s another secondary wall installation around Mascouche and the city of Amazon Prime. There are an additional twelve million living in the other walls’ suburbs.

“And these walls keep them safe enough?” I asked.

That’s unlikely. The quality of the walls varies significantly from city to city. From what I can find with a cursory look, the walls are paid for by either corporate entities, or the cities themselves.

Which meant lowest bidder shit all the way, at a time when no one could afford anything. “Right, I can see how this’ll go already,” I said.

Gomorrah had sent me a ping with a location to meet at. It was just outside of the main wall, next to one of the big openings designed to let traffic in. I noticed the spot, but flew on anyways, making a quick circuit along the outer wall. There were some defensive installations out here, and a few of them looked like gated camps and muster grounds on the outer edge of the suburbs.

At a guess, the local PMCs had discovered that buying lots of high-risk land was suddenly worth it for them. Or they were being given the right to use the land. Or… well, it didn’t matter. The outer-outer walls were mostly mesh and barbed wire, with the occasional cement wall that wasn’t much more than three metres tall and already crooked.

Some sections of the walls were new. Others had probably been around for a few decades. It was easy to tell the old apart from the new. The new didn’t have graffiti covering their every surface.

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

I turned back towards the big city and flew over to where Gomorrah’s signal called for me. I found her Fury parked in the middle of a wide open exterior parking lot in front of what looked like a recently-converted grocery store.

There were two rows of thirty main battle tanks. Then four land fortresses parked nearby. Men and women were swarming around, though it didn’t look like they were moving with any real hurry.