He almost made the atrium, but then he looked over his shoulder, and seeing Dahl almost within grabbing range made him flinch and stumble. He bumped into a fellow commuter, and his momentum carried him sideways into a store’s merchandise rack. Snack packages and electronic trinkets scattered all over the floor of the passage. Dahl and Idina swooped in from two sides, and Vigi Fuldas backpedaled with wide and panicked eyes. He looked from them to the atrium and the distant exit doors.
“Help,” he shouted. “Someone help!”
The racket had already drawn the attention of the nearby crowd, and Vigi’s cries seemed to signal that there might be good entertainment to be had. As Dahl hauled him to his feet and prepared to put the restraints on him, he looked over his shoulder at the slowly gathering crowd and repeated his loud pleas.
“If you do not shut up, I will stun you unconscious and have my colleague carry you out of here on her shoulder,” Dahl said, irritation in her voice.
He jerked away from Dahl, and she lost her grip. When she lunged to grab him again, he kicked out with his hard-shell boots and connected with the armor pad on her thigh. She gave him a shove with both hands, which sent him stumbling backward but didn’t quite bring him down.
“Have it your way,” Dahl said and pulled her stun stick from her belt.
She swung it at him, but he dodged the first swing. For a man of his build, he was surprisingly nimble. When she took another swing, he had his orange sling pack in his hands and parried her blow with it. All around them, a crowd of mostly young men had closed in to watch the event. They had the attention of almost everyone in earshot now, and with every passing second, it would get more difficult to walk out of this place without incident. Idina decided to cut the proceedings short. She dashed toward Fuldas, shrugged off the blow from the pack he was swinging her way, and bodychecked him. He was over a head taller and muscular for a Gretian, but the collision finally knocked him on his ass and sent him skidding across the passage floor for a meter or two. When she hauled him to his feet and turned him toward Dahl so she could put the restraints on him, Fuldas shouted for help again. Some people in the crowd that all but surrounded them by now responded with whistling and jeers.
When Idina’s hands were free again, she turned to look for the path out. When she saw the hostile faces surrounding her, she realized that her move had been a mistake. Their own police officer roughing up Vigi was not a noteworthy event, but seeing a foreign occupation soldier mixing it up with him had riled up some of the spectators. Crowd dynamics were volatile. The smallest spark of aggression could erupt into a conflagration very quickly, and groups of young men were the most flammable kindling of all.
“All available units, I need backup for crowd control now,” she sent on her platoon channel. “Home in on our location and put the Quick Reaction Force on alert.”
A kid with a scruffy red chin beard squared off in front of Dahl and Fuldas.
“Why are you so mean?” he said. “Why are you so mean?”
It seemed like a mild and slightly ridiculous accusation to Idina, but she knew that the translator tended to err on the side of excessive formality. He kept saying the phrase, getting closer to Dahl with each repetition, until he was standing just beyond arm’s length. Behind him, the crowd jeered again, which seemed to encourage him. The space between them and the rest of the crowd grew smaller with every moment.
“Back off and be on your way,” Dahl said in her command voice. She brought up her stun stick to keep the kid from getting nose to nose with her while she only had one hand free. Fuldas used the opportunity to unbalance her slightly by yanking his body weight away from her. The kid with the chin tuft reached out and grabbed Dahl by the wrist, then tried to take the stun stick out of her hand.
With that move, the mob decided that the show had turned from a spectator to a participation event. Several young men crowded around them, encouraged by Dahl’s momentary lack of a stern response. Dahl recovered her hold on the stick and brought it down on the side of her attacker’s head, putting an end to his ongoing lamentation of their meanness. But Idina knew that the scale had already tipped. She took the riot shield handle from her belt and activated it. Before the cruciform frame could fully deploy, someone crashed into her, pushed by another member of the crowd, and the shield handle fell from her hand and clattered to the ground. She shoved the kid back toward the crowd, but they were too close and too numerous. Next to her, two more young men had pushed Dahl backward and against the window of a nearby shop while others were pulling Fuldas away from her.
Idina pushed her way toward Dahl and put one of them in a headlock from behind, then yanked him away. She felt people reaching for her arms, her helmet, the remaining equipment on her belt. Someone tried to yank her sidearm from its holster. Idina lashed out with her elbow and was rewarded with a cry of pain, and the hand left her pistol’s grip again. She felt the blow of a kick against her back armor and stumbled forward against Dahl, who had freed herself with the help of her stun stick. Then it was just blows and kicks, too many for her to deflect with her hands and arms. For a moment, she had the impulse to draw her sidearm, but even if she
