Winterfair II: "Puppy Walking... (Pt 1)"
"Winterfair II: Puppy Walking... (Pt 1)"
A Vorkosigan FanFic
By Roger Stenning
Based on the characters, situations, and universe created, set, and owned by
Lois McMaster Bujold. The contents of this story are for personal, non-commercial
use only. Any use of Lois McMaster Bujold's copyrighted material or trademarks
anywhere in this story should not be viewed as a challenge to those copyrights
or trademarks. This disclaimer must remain as an integral part of this file.
The material in this story may be used/abused by other FanFic authors, provided
that credit is given where credit is due - "Turnabout is fair play"!
Copyright 2012, Roger Stenning.
***
This fic was inspired by the Winterfair Mark Two plot bunny by selene_314:
“There are a lot of imposing figures in and around the Vorkosigan family. I'd like to see one of them early on, starting to grow into his (or her) power.”
***
Many thanks as usual, to my Beta Reading Team, Coalboy, Jekni, Philomytha, and Sharaith, without whom, this story would not have proper grammar or spelling (or decent wording in places come to that), and would probably still be stuck on the keyboard!
***
The sergeant, whose machine-embroidered name tag read "Meklov", looked him up and down. Mostly up. Meklov wasn't a very tall man. He stood five foot six in his socks, and his uniform half boots only added three-quarters of an inch in height. But he was also practically as wide as he was... um... tall, and none of it seemed to look like flab. Hell, even his jaw looked like it had muscles on its muscles. He was chewing the stub of a half-smoked cigar, which was currently unlit, of course, rules were rules - especially in this, the Municipal Guard's most high-profile substation in Hassadar, smack dab across the Main Square from the Count’s Residence. His voice was like two rocks of granite rubbing together. Hard, and very, very rough. He had a mountain accent too, even more broad than Roic’s when under stress.
"So you're Roic, eh? I can see why they posted you here. You'll be able to see over the crowds." Roic, not ten minutes into his very first live shift as a Municipal Street Guard (Third Class) was somewhat taken aback. Wasn't there a height restriction for the Hassadar Municipal Guard?
Meklov grunted at Roic’s expression. "Hmph. I know what you're wondering. Height limits, right?"
Roic gulped silently and, not trusting his voice, nodded. What? Was this potential mutant pygmy a mind reader too?!
"I got an exemption thanks to my Imperial Service record. And I'm damn good at my job. Which is why they got me to puppy walk you. The Municipal Guard Academy over there in Vorbarr Sultana may train you how to do the job. I'll teach you how to do it right, and how to go home again after each shift. Questions?"
OK, maybe not a mutant then, if he'd done Imperial Service. But he’d never heard of an ‘exemption’ before, and curiosity was eating at him there and then. "An exemption, Sergeant? What’s that?"
Meklov grunted and nodded once, running his hand across his head, which was shaved almost bald. "It’s a way the various services have of helping some folks; they normally only give it to people who do well, or who are expected to do well. I was Imperial Infantry. Saw some proper work here and there during my time. Decided I wanted a different form of service at the end, and thanks to a half-decent recommendation from the service, and an exemption from the Guard, here I am. I'm a thrice ten man already, coming up on my fourth ten in a few years. I aim to make it there, intact, and live disgustingly unhealthily and immorally on my pension thereafter.” He looked pointedly at Roic, and his voice dropped an octave. “You got a problem with that?"
Roic’s shake of the head was most emphatic. "No, SIR!"
Meklov leaned up at Roic, who suddenly felt very insecure. How the HELL did the short-arse in front of him project so much physical threat in such a slight move forwards? "Can the 'Sir' crap. I work for a living. You call me 'Sergeant', until I tell you otherwise. Get yer coat and hat. I'll meet you at the gun cage." He spun around, and stalked out of the locker room, while Roic let out a heavy sigh. Well, talk about leaving good first impressions. This wasn't going at all well, was it? What a way to start a night shift!
***
Meklov was already kitted out, and leaning on the gun cage mesh wall as Roic left the locker room. Hang on, how the hell had he done that so quickly?
"C'm'ere, boy, ain't got all night, we got bad folk to nab, tourists to confuse, and lots of lovely pavement pounding to do." He nodded to the man in the gun cage, a plump Father Frost-like figure, with a balding head of white hair, who looked like he was just about ready for retirement. "This is Corporal Eventine. He runs the combined armoury and arsenal - the Gun Cage - here. Look after him, and he'll look after you. Frank, this is the new guy they gave me, name of Roic."
Eventine grinned toothily, revealing a somewhat uneven set of teeth, a number of which appeared to be missing from his left jaw. "Aren't you the lucky one. Mind you, if you weren't a masochist, you wouldn't be the Substation Training Officer, would you?" He chuckled, and turned to Roic. "Right, then. All ready to receive your gear? Good."
He started to dump items from behind him onto the desk surface between them, each item landing with a metallic clunk of varying weight. "Heavy Duty Stunner. Stunner charge packs by three. Tanglefield generator. Manual handcuffs and key. Irritant spray. Baton, side-handled, extensible, with shock stick end, rechargeable. Flashlight, solid state, with two power packs. MG-Issue datapad, with spare power pack. Fines pad. Report pad. Patrol pad. Styluses, manual, black ink filled, four. Main Square station badge, embroidered, basic issue allotment pack, hook-and-loop backed.”
He turned back to Roic, and tapped the badge pack. “You'll want to use a couple of those straight off. Word to the wise - keep the rest of them in your locker. You never know when you'll need one. Last, but probably no means least, your station key. Thumb prints for every item - that's twenty three of the buggers - all one below the other, along here," he pointed to a column on the data pad he slid across to Roic, "And then we're done until you get back. Remember, the ironmongery, you hand back at the shift end; the admin kit, you keep until posted away from here. Clear?" Roic nodded as he entered his print for the numerous items he'd just been issued.
Meklov reached across him, and dumped the various items into a shopping basket he'd retrieved around the corner of the cage. "Done? Marvellous. Over here." He nodded to a bench along the free wall of the cage room. His demeanour changed; he wasn't the grizzled unapproachable senior non-com now, he was talking normally, in a 'here's some good advice' manner.
"Stand here, and stand still. I'm going to kit you up. It's faster this way". Leaving the stunner alone, he put every item into its allotted place on Roic’s utility belt. "Right. Grab your stunner, perform the Normal Safety Precautions for it, load and make it ready in all respects, and holster it securely. Go." Roic did as ordered without saying a word. He'd learned to keep his mouth shut around T.O.s in the Academy, unless asked a direct question. This felt like one of those times. He noticed that Meklov had left the handcuff key in the basket. Huh?
Meklov reached into the basket, and lifted the key. "This goes where?"
"The key clip on my belt, Sergeant."
"OK, and when the bad guy - and there WILL be a bad guy who does this at least once - cuffs you with your own cuffs, and legs it away with your key, what then?"
"No idea, Sergeant."
"Good. I like trainees to admit when they don't know something. You'd be amazed how many arrogant know-it-alls come out of that damn place. Get a second key. It'll cost you five marks from Frank over there. The purchase'll be recorded, as it's a restricted item. You'll have to return it when you leave or retire from the Guard, and believe me, they will check. Do that before you knock off shift. This is where you stick it".
He undid his utility belt, and holding up the female end of the buckle, pushed and twisted it until it snapped open with a click. He showed Roic the hollow slot that separating the two halves had revealed, and pointed to the handcuff key that was secreted there. "This is a not-very-well-known feature of the manufacture of the belt buckle. It's designed to come apart to facilitate ease of repair, and somewhere along the way, it just so happened that someone noticed that a cuff key would push-fit into this slot.” He reassembled the buckle, and put it back around his waist, clipping it in place.
“Tell no-one outside the Guard about this. It may help to save your neck one day. And to save you time at the end of the shift, just hand Frank your entire belt with its contents when you log off. You'll get it back from him the next shift, with everything either replaced, recharged, or topped off." He took the unopened station badge pack from Roic, extracted a couple of the hook-and-loop badges, and handed the rest back to Roic. "Take your coat off." Meklov fastened a badge to Roic’s left shirt arm and left coat arm, and told him to dump the rest in his locker, which Roic did.
When Roic returned, Meklov was signing a duty log pad. He looked up as he replaced the pad on the Station Duty Sergeant's desk. “When we go out there today, we will not, I say again not, be looking to arrest anyone, break up any trouble, or in any way go looking for trouble. Today, I'll be familiarising you with the area that we patrol. Local knowledge goes a hell of a long way in this job; local knowledge can show you when something's not right. Generally speaking, when the atmosphere of a road, street, alley, or shop feels wrong, there's a damn good reason for it; this knowledge can tell you when it's time to hit the ground, run into trouble, or merely keep your wits about you. Got that?”
“I think so.”
“Good, because I'll be asking questions about what you see out there later. Let's go.”
***
The rest of the evening, Roic and Meklov did exactly what the sergeant had said they'd do. They pounded the pavements of the catchment area of the Sub Station, with Meklov having Roic memorise the road names, landmarks, and not-so-well-known features of the area. He did, indeed, ask questions on all of this when they took their meal break at the shaslyk stand in the Main Square. A couple of other Guardsmen were there, and greeted Meklov with knowing grins. Meklov introduced Roic to them as Kosmin and Verenkov, and then, looking both the veteran Guardsmen up and down, he just shook his head balefully.
“And to think that you two were prospects for rising stars when I puppy-walked you back then.” His timing was spot on, of course. The other two coughed, snorted their drinks down their noses at the same moment, stared at Meklov with shocked looks on their faces, and all three broke down and laughed. Roic, not getting the joke, just looked puzzled. “Don't worry about it, lad. Give it a couple of years, and you'll understand all too well, but to give you a heads up: You remember the speech that the Commandant of the Guard Academy gives on Welcome Day?”
Roic nodded. “It was long winded, full of the possibilities, the various branches we could serve in, and so on, that the speech, Sarn't?”
“That's the one. Biggest load of horse manure since they told us the Second Wave was on the way.” He meant the non-existent Second Colonisation Ship that never made it to Barrayar due to the original wormhole closing, which led to Barrayar’s Time of Isolation, the period of several centuries of technological regression following from when the wormhole to the Nexus collapsed, before a new route was discovered via Komarr, marking the end of her galactic isolation. “OK, I'll let you in on the joke. Opportunities for us lowly thick-headed knuckle-dragging pavement pounders are few and far between. The best we can generally hope for is that we'll get promoted in this branch, or make it to one of Central’s Incident Response Team heavy mobs. For one of us to make it to Detective or Technical Specialist, or even Special Ops, is about as likely as finding rocking horse manure. This said, we can, and do, make a difference. OK?”
“Yeah, I guessed as much at the Academy. Guys with better education than I had were getting guidance from the course counsellors, and looking at mapped out career paths leading all the way to the top. All I got from the counsellors was the usual 'are you enjoying the course?' questions, and repeated advice from the medics about treating sore feet and how to keep warm in the cold.” Roic shrugged. “You kind of figure out your place in things when you get a chat like that from a guy with stars on his shoulder boards.”
The other three nodded in agreement. Meklov swallowed the remains of his curried chicken shaslyk, downed the rest of his coffee, and turned back to Roic. “Right then, let's get moving aga-” he was interrupted by his radio - all of their radios, in fact - giving off a high-pitched bleeping six times rapidly, then the strident voice of the Central Dispatcher.
“This is Central. Thirteen thirteen. I say again, thirteen thirteen. Uniform Tango. Service alley behind 739 Liberation Road. All units Mike Sierra respond code blue. Out.”
Meklov swore, lobbed his coffee and rubbish in the bin beside the shaslyk stand, and yelling “WITH ME!” at the other three, took off at the sprint, the others close behind. Roic’s mind was a jumble. Thirteen-thirteen was the radio code signifying that a Guardsman was in mortal danger. It was a code that all available guardsmen were required to attend at full speed, immaterial of all other concerns. Uniform Tango meant unknown trouble. The Academy gave a couple of examples, from an instant riot - rare these days - to a bull charging down a side street and trapping a guardsman in a cul-de-sac. The moral of the tale was that anything could turn to hell in a handbasket in an instant, and Guardsmen were to be aware of their surroundings at all times. It wasn't always possible, and this, his first day on the job, was telling him that in spades.
Meklov was managing to somehow keep ahead of Roic who, with his just-out-of-the-acadamy fitness, and greater stride-length, should have been able to get ahead of the sergeant with ease, but with the route that Meklov was taking, Roic had to stay on his tail. Meklov was bulling through side streets, alleys, and around the side of a department store - Petrov's Fineries - before they got to the scene not two minutes after they'd set off, huffing and puffing. They weren't the first on the scene, but they weren't the last. Three area fliers and a dog skiff were already there, and a score of other Guardsmen arrived just after Roic and company had got there. The sergeant took one look at the scene, and swore again. Three guardsmen - from the first Flier on-scene, Roic assumed - were kneeling by another who was flat on his back, a massive gash leaking blood at an alarming rate in his lower abdomen, as they worked feverishly to stem the bleeding with a trauma bandage. There was blood everywhere.
Continued in part 2...