This is Not a Drill

[HexyLon]

Natalie Vaughn had just locked down Freight 12 when the compad lit up.
Not the usual half-dead message from dispatch, but something bright red, flashing “PRIORITY ONE – STATION-WIDE ALERT.” Her stomach sank before her brain caught up.
A second later, she heard Olhauzer’s voice, amplified and cracking like it always did under pressure. She ducked out from behind the loader rig and into the open bay, just in time to catch him shouting about Erie and Philadelphia.

Shit.

That wasn’t a speech anymore. That was panic dressed up in a uniform.

Before the crowd even started shifting, Natalie keyed into her backup frequency — the one the dockside foremen used when things went sideways and the suits couldn’t fix it with a memo.

“Vaughn, support tech. I’m on Freight 3. Routing to central—do you need bodies on security?”

“Affirmative,” came the reply — clipped, stressed, and barely audible over the crowd noise. “Get to the upper concourse. Crowd’s getting jumpy. Olhauzer’s losing them.”

She didn’t wait for another confirmation. She clipped the sidearm onto her belt — company-issued, still sealed from disuse — and grabbed the shock baton from the emergency locker. On impulse, she also yanked the old riot shield from the wall mount. The polymer was scratched to hell, but it still locked into her forearm brace like it was meant to.
She’d never used it on people before. The hope was she wouldn’t have to.

By the time she reached the concourse, the noise was building into a low-grade riot.
People were pissed. People were scared. That’s when stupid things started happening. She spotted Olhauzer up on the crate, arms raised, trying to hold back the tide with nothing but a bad speech and worse odds.

Then someone hurled a wrench.
It hit him across the shoulder with a wet thunk, spinning him half-around. He staggered, grabbed the crate’s edge, and somehow kept talking through gritted teeth. His voice cracked, off-tempo and wild.

“You don’t want who they’ll send next—! You know me, dammit! I’m—I'm still here!”

He wasn’t going to be for long.

Natalie shoved her way through the growing crush. Before she could clear the last steps, a young security guard pivoted and jammed her back with a forceful two-hand push, eyes wide and breathing hard.

“Back the hell up!” the guard barked, then blinked in recognition. “Wait—shit, sorry—Vaughn?”

Natalie caught her balance, adjusted the shield, and nodded once. “Yeah. I’m DSE. I’ve got clearance and I know this deck better than anyone. Who’s coordinating movement?”
The girl pointed, flustered, toward a grizzled man barking orders into a headset. Natalie moved fast, relaying positions, checking exits. She knew which corridors had airlock redundancy, which lifts jammed under pressure. She ran logistics — not combat — but logistics was how you won fights without shooting.

“If this crowd surges,” she warned, “they’ll bottleneck at corridor 4-A. Vent routes there are compromised. You’ll have a crush casualty scenario inside two minutes.”

The man stared at her, then nodded sharply. “Good. You’re with us. Triage and comms.”

Some in the crowd were already breaking, scattering toward the side halls. But others leaned forward like they smelled blood. It was only going to get worse.
Natalie took her place behind a makeshift barricade. The shield was heavier than she remembered, but it gave her something to brace against — and something between her and the storm.

She didn’t sign up to play riot cop. But she knew what happened when you left security short-handed during a panic. She’d seen it on Erie. She’d survived it.

And if today went the same way, she'd damn well make sure someone else did too.