Book 2: Chapter 18: It’s Getting Worse
Riker
Sept 2172
Sol
A crowd stood outside the police lines. Hopeless faces, some crying; parents holding children by the hand, couples holding each other, wearing stricken looks. People who would be better off almost anywhere but here.
Sixty-three confirmed dead, so far. The apartment building, a run-down six-floor concrete structure with no balconies, now had a huge bite taken out of it at ground level. That it would have to be condemned was a given. I was more worried that it might fall over any moment, crushing everything nearby.
This wasn’t a great neighborhood. By almost any pre-war standards, it would be a slum. Buildings all had their own power systems since the invention of dependable fusion, but the streets were dirty, unlit, and covered with graffiti. Windows and doors at ground level had long since been reinforced or completely covered over. Stains ran down the sides of the structures from weather, deteriorating paint, and contributions from birds.
The people living in this favela hadn’t been significant in any way. They weren’t government, or military, or anything that would justify making them a target. Just people, probably unemployed, living on the edge of poverty. Most of them likely had no hope, no future, other than the possibility of eventual emigration to another star system.
What was the point? What could possibly justify this? The perpetrators had attacked people with next to nothing, and taken even that. Sometimes it shamed me to think that I used to be human.
I accepted a call from the Brazilian minister.