Doctor Who_ Transit - Ben Aaronovitch [44]
Zamina flung herself down as something whispered overhead.
A three-metre-long drone painted red and yellow was swooping into position in front of a burning shop. A vent popped open at the rear and there was a rushing sound as air was sucked in. The smoke haze made Mandelbrot patterns behind the drone as it closed to lay bursts of freezing CO2 on the fire.
Zamina started to crawl again, pulling Roberta behind her. The first fire-drones to respond had been shot down by the gangs, if they were active in this area it meant that the riot had moved on. She was four metres from the orphanage when the second drone went overhead. This one was slightly larger and blue-coloured with Chinese characters painted on its underside. Like the first it arrived from the opposite direction to Lowell Station; their controllers must have been routing them in from the service tunnels that honeycombed the crust beneath the projects. The second drone took up a sentry position above and behind the first.
More drones swept into Main Street. Another firefighter took up position in front of a burning building. The blue police-drone shifted position to cover both. Some of the drones were difficult to see, their chassis blending into the background. Mimetic polycarbon, Zamina sensed rather than saw them moving. Random dips and swerves designed to complicate hostile target resolutions. Their weapons would be hidden under jack turrets, waiting to pop out and return fire.
The army had arrived.
She remembered the confrontation on Williamsberg Avenue. Hatred rolling out like an Atlantic wave to break over the single line of blue uniforms. You came from the Stop, from bad housing, bad schools, from meals made out of pet food, from a place where recession was status quo and the one thing that was clear was that you never got out. You got to see out, watching Systemwide! on English-5, riding the trains to all the places that you'd glimpsed. You learnt quick that visiting wasn't living, that the Stop clung to you wherever you went.
So you went back because the job evaporated and without the job you couldn't raise the key money for a pad. Back to the catfood monsters, the urine-smelling stairways and the shitty flights that were always broken. Back because it suited the Powers-that-be that you stay there.
They cracked the paving stones and threw them at the cops.
Pulled fixtures out of shops, filled bottles full of industrial alcohol and made rag fuses from the strips they tore from their clothes. The missiles arched overhead to rain down on the policemen who stood their ground, dodging the firebombs, letting the stones bang off their armour. You could see the fear in the set of their mouths under their helmet visors. Fear overtaken by anger and hate.
Zamina recognized the sergeant in charge. The same tired-looking face and masai haircut, the detective from the murder scene two days ago. His hair was scraped back and plastered down with red mud. It came in little enamel tins, she'd seen them in a Mombasa fashion boutique. He paced up and down behind the line of policemen calmly giving orders, keeping them steady. It could have gone on like that for hours if it hadn't been for the kid in the white T-shirt.
The boy came running through the crowd. He was maybe ten years old, thin white legs sticking out of baggy khaki shorts. He was cradling something close to his belly, masking it with both arms, making his gait awkward as he ran. The cops shifted as he ran towards them, the shock-rods nervous in their hands,