'Okay, then you are in the wrong place. We are leaving the city, fast. As fast as BIL here can carry us. So I suggest the two of you hop the hell out right now,' Moore said.
'Can we ask why you're leaving the city? And who you are?' Fehrer asked.
'Are you transmitting with that thing? Reyez, take it.' Moore nodded Jones to the video device that the cameraman was wielding.
Jones grabbed for the camera but Calvin yanked it back and started to put up a fight. Moore gave Calvin a rifle butt to the stomach and then swept his legs out from under him with a sweeping hook kick to the back of the knee. He spun around and placed a jumpboot on Calvin's wrist, pinning the video camera to the floor of the garbage hauler. He then placed the rifle barrel closer to the man's faceplate.
'You sit still, young lady.' Joanie Hassed moved in closer to Gail, giving her a nice view of the wrong end of the other Seppy rifle.
'Wait!' Fehrer cried. 'Stop, we can't hurt you because we're unarmed. Calvin, give them the damned camera.'
Reluctantly, Calvin released his grip on the video device and rolled his head back, pounding the back of his helmet into the floor with disgust. Reyez grabbed the camera and made sure that the transmission and record were turned off. Abigail double-checked it with her QM sensors also just to make sure that Reyez hadn't missed anything.
'Hold on!' Fehrer continued. 'We're just following a news story. We've seen the troop movement from here to the far south dome. We can help you. It's obvious that you're not Seppy troops or you wouldn't be hiding in here. Relax. We're on your side.'
'Alexander, I think she is telling the truth,' Sehera told her husband. Her daughter stood behind her, hugging onto her left leg, hiding her face.
'Yes. We are telling the truth.' Calvin Dean rose slowly and pulled himself to his feet, grunting and coughing from the residual pain the rifle butt to the gut had created.
'All right. No sudden moves. And neither of you so much as sneezes without asking me first,' the senator warned them. He had never trusted the press as far back as his days at Mississippi State. He had seen them generate news at the expense of his teammates' futures with very little thought. And the way the press handled the Desert Campaigns on Mars was nothing short of treason, but they had gotten away with it. As a politician, granted he was a public person to be scrutinized by the public. But in general, he felt the press had never done anything but cause heartache and hardship. There were occasions for the exception, though, and of course he believed in free speech, but he also believed in ethics and honor. Moore had found that most of the mainstream press had neither ethics nor honor, just a thirst for the power of being a public figure. Moore had seen one or two out of the hundreds of reporters he had met that may have been worth killing, but only one or two. The rest weren't worth the railgun round it would take to blast them. The jury was out on these two at the moment. And Moore wasn't in the mood to put up with much at the moment.
'Ok. Could you lower your lights a bit, though? They're giving me a headache,' the cameraman asked.
'BIL, how much longer?' Moore asked out loud.
'We have currently accelerated to top speed of one hundred and eighty kilometers per hour and are about forty-seven minutes from the evacuation coordinates, Senator Moore,' BIL quickly responded. Moore cringed when BIL used his title and name. Now he'd have to answer a bunch of damned questions. 'I would suggest that you all sit on the floor and make yourselves as comfortable as you can. I will try to reduce the bumpiness of the ride as best I can.'
'Thank you, BIL. Just get us there in time.' Moore motioned for everyone to have a seat. Once they were all seated facing each other in a circle, he sat down too.
'Senator Moore? Alexander Moore from Mississippi?' Fehrer asked. 'You're part of the Arbitration Summit right?'
'Yes.'
'That's it? Yes? You're the first politician I've ever seen not in a hurry to wax poetic for the press.' Gail laughed, wishing she could get her camera back and record this conversation.
'Well, if you haven't noticed, Miss Fehrer, we are under attack and under siege by a Separatist military force the likes of which hasn't been seen for decades. And my wife, daughter, and I are caught up in the midst of it all. So pardon me if I'm more concerned with the safety and evacuation of my family and these two citizens at the moment than being on the news.'
'Sorry, Senator. I understand. Listen. Let Calvin have his camera back. We'll record only and wait to transmit until we are safely away from the Seppies. I wouldn't mind getting out of here either. I promise not to broadcast,' Fehrer begged the rifle-wielding statesman.
'All right. But my staffer is QMing you. If you so much as emit one iota from that thing I'll bust some rounds off through it and then squish it with my jumpboots, understand?' Moore eyed the two of them and raised the rifle barrel upward for emphasis, but he could tell they understood.
'Promise, Senator.'
'All right then. Reyez, give the man back his camera.' Moore nodded to the adventure shop manager and then turned back to the reporter. 'I guess you've got questions?'
'Well, my first one is why aren't the troops interested in this . . . thing?' she motioned her arms around meaning the garbage hauler. 'I guess you couldn't see it from inside here, but you just walked by hundreds of Separatists troop vehicles all of which were loaded with troops. And not a single one of them paid you any mind at all. Why?'
'Because BIL told them not to?' the senator's daughter giggled.
'I'm sorry, BIL?' Gail asked.
'Yes. BIL, the garbage spider,' Deanna replied again.
