Of Terrorists and Territory (& Crumpets)

[Bretonia Police Authority]

[color=#FFFFFF]Of Terrorists and Territory (& Crumpets)

The rain beat downward on Constable Glassford as it often did on Planet New London. It also had an annoying habit of driving sideways, straight at his face and in some places where the surrounded buildings funnelled the wind correctly it curved up from underneath.
This strange climate had various effects on the residents of Bretonia’s capital planet; persons were either put into a perpetual state of stoicism where they just learned to accept the frustrating things thrown at them in life without complaint or they ended up being rather jolly in the face of it all, knowing that a good laugh can stave off the dreariness felt by being exposed to even the most annoying rain storm.

Quite which side of the spectrum Clinton Glassford resided was unknown. He was a fairly quiet member of the Bretonia Police Authority, loyal and discerning, but never outspoken enough to warrant a promotion. He was a hard man to figure emotionally, no one was quite sure what he was feeling at any time. This was part of the reason his girlfriend of six months had left him which in turn was the reason for his sojourn through the night darkened streets of the Megatropolis’ shopping district.

He wasn’t quite sure what he was feeling himself, but he felt like being alone. He turned away from the bright lights of the arcades and trudged down an alley, kicking aside the odd bit of litter hunched in his overcoat. The alley took him to a fenced area which ran behind the line of buildings, the razor wire had rusted and the mesh had been torn in places. He stepped through the gap in the boundary once built to prevent vandals and jumpers and onto the dirty gravel.

The patch of building free space was the foundation area for the above rail system which, at the time, was a gleaming piece of modern architecture and the government didn’t want its image being sullied by graffiti or suicidal members of the public climbing the pillars in order to throw themselves off. The clear space also made it easy to maintain the foundations (should they ever need that, building systems in that day and age had progressed to a stage where only an earthquake would damage the structure to the point where it needed repair).

Despite the absence of earthquakes over the last few decades (the planets tectonic plates being fairly stable) maintenance did indeed appear to be happening on the closest pillar to Glassford. He approached not caring much however, thinking he could follow this track for as long as he wanted.
This was not the case as his progress was interrupted by a member of the BPA.

“Stop right there citizen!” the man commanded.
Glassford halted and eyed him up, “What’s going on here?”
“Maintenance, it is unsafe for you to be here sir, please leave the area.”
“I haven’t seen you before,” Glassford said slowly “what station are you from?”
The officer seemed slightly thrown by the question, “Err, Pennington! But what business is it of yours? Anyway I told you to leave!”

Glassford mulled this over, there wasn’t a BPA station at Pennington as far as he knew, he was about to turn away when he noticed something quite curious about the uniform that the person standing in front of him was wearing.

The cuffs were the wrong colour.

“What exactly are you chaps working on there?” he called to the group of four engineers he could see huddled around the pillar.
He thought he caught something along the lines of ‘dispose of him?’ and ‘no we need more time to get this done, make him leave.’
The BPA Officer moved his hand to a holster, “Sir I need you to leave this area now.”
Clinton pulled back with his palms out to show he wasn’t going to argue.
“That’s fine with me.” He turned and began to walk away but spun back to ask the Officer a question.
“You BPA types must be enjoying the new vehicle legislation; it’ll cut right down the number of offences you have to deal with right?”

The ‘Officer’, replied “Uh yea, yea it’s great, finally a good thing to come out of the government!”
Glassford made his way back through the gap in the fence and into the alley. When he was sure he was far enough away he reached into his overcoat pocked and pulled out a communicator into which he tapped an authorization code.

He leaned against the concrete wall as the rain poured down over New London.

“This is Constable Glassford; I need backup near the Burlington Rail Bridge at once.”

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