Beerat Militia
(The following is taken from a list email sent 11:04 PM 9/20/20)
Beerat Militia
Okay, after further reflection, I think that Beerat does have a 'militia', they just call it something else. The Womb is a larger version of Luna's Evacuation Buffer bases, with the quarters set up as permanent homes instead of short-term hotel rooms. That's larger as in more spread out, not as in more people. It will be a long time before the Womb has as many people as even one of those Volunteer Processing Centers.
Every spoke -or horizontal tunnel- whether residential, industrial, agricultural, or 'other', has someone assigned as that spoke's Hall Monitor. Unless it's shut down, no utilities except maybe light and gravity, it has a Monitor. And, in that case, it is probably closed off, with the pressure hatches shut.
It has to be someone who either lives in that spoke or works there, and he/she/it will have a couple of deputies. One of them MUST be present in that spoke at all times. He/she/it is that spoke's fire warden / civil defense coordinator / damage control team leader / neighborhood watch president and he doesn't get to leave the spoke without turning his hat over to someone else. He might be asleep, at work, or in bed with Suzy and Fred, but he's there.
The Monitor just about has to be a Crew-Conk. He can't be a Volunteer, as they get transferred around as needed. As a general rule, anyone appointed as a Hall Monitor gets transferred to the CS. Again, that ensures that they won't get orders to do something else while they are on duty. They all report to the Mayor's Environmental Director. If anyone gets pissy and wants to know who a Monitor's Sponsor is, it's probably the Mayor. Go argue with him.
Mostly the Monitor does his own job, if he has one. He probably doesn't though. He can get called away from it at any time. He's the one that gets called if we can't find Felix the Cat and Woomie can't either. Since you and I are probably off doing something important, he's the one who gets called when one of my kids starts beating up one of your kids. He has to be easy to find, and he has to be able to drop whatever he's doing and do whatever is needed to handle today's crisis.
Most Monitors just hang out at the first public place in from the Well, the central shaft that connects everything. Restaurant, home, retail shop, pub. Whatever you get to first if you're walking in from the Well. Talking to people, just hanging out, taking a nap.
Militia Equipment
Since the Monitors -the only members of the 'militia'- are trained in emergency response and management rather than combat, they have very little in the way of true military equipment. They don't even have a uniform. Instead, they wear standard "Crew-Conk" earpieces which allows the local AI to give them clear information and instructions regardless of the noise level. They also carry a red brassard that they can put on their upper left arm if they decide that they need to become 'official' and start giving orders.
Hotel, the moon of Ale which is being terraformed as a resort and rest center, does provide basic infantry training and equipment for the permanent staff. As this comes out to barely more than a company-sized formation, they generally just use the equipment that the Demeter Militia has standardized for their planetary defense.
Hotel also has a complete set of equipment for a standard CMC armored company, including three platoons of "Rommel" heavy tanks. This is not militia equipment and the militia is not trained in its use. It is all CMC property and is usually in storage. It's just there in case Hotel happens to have qualified Marines in residence when "shit goes down".
Naturally, every Marine transferred into the Beerat system takes the time to get qualified on them. They _say_ that they have orders to qualify as Rommel crew, but I've seen the grins on their faces when they come back from the live-fire range.
Emergency Management
The Monitor isn't sposta be giving orders unless there's an emergency. He doesn't run your farm, your factory, your home, your spoke's school. If he puts his brassard on and starts giving orders, though, everyone in the spoke's gotta do what he says. Volunteer, Conk, Kid. Live there, working there, just passing through trying to buy some fresh celery, ya gotta do what the Monitor says.
He may or may not be giving the right orders as YOU see it, but he's in contact with the other Monitors and the Mayor's office. If things go wrong enough, he's in contact with the Womb's Marine garrison, too. He's not on his own. He's got experts whispering in his left ear while you yell in his right ear.
Besides, even doing the wrong thing is usually better than doing nothing or doing five different conflicting things, and he's the one who went to school and did all the training for obscure environmental problems, not you. Start doing what he said and while you're doing that contact Woomie, and if your idea is better then the Monitor will be changing your orders before long. He knows that he doesn't know everything. Unlike you, jackass.
Home Defense Plans
If the Dickheads land on the Womb and start marching down the tunnels, then everyone puts on their skinsuits and Environmental makes sure all the hatches are closed and that there's no oxygen in the air anywhere they have reached. It might take 20 or 30 minutes, but sooner or later they will all keel over.
If you just gotta kill the Dickheads faster because they are shooting up the brewery, every spoke has a locker at the first cross-corridor, usually a couple hundred meters out from the central well. Well, there are a lot of "DC Gear" lockers, there's one at every intersection, but that first intersection also has a red and brown locker. It's never locked, because if it's ever needed then the people needing it won't be able to unlock it.
Each one of those red and brown lockers has twenty Earth-style semi-automatic firearms and an even hundred five-shot magazines. That 'five' is because the guns fire a 14mm round, so if they made the magazines any larger they would be too heavy and awkward to handle. The bullet is supposed to penetrate the first thing it hits and then explode on the other side. A lot of people call them "Elephant Guns".
The guns are made with Confed materials, but the only AI interface is the tracking tag. Anyone can use them. The AI can neither assist nor interfere with their use. All the AI can do is keep track of who removed them, where they went, who has held them, and who fired them. Anyone who DOES use them, though, without the Mayor's office declaring an invasion, is probably going to spend the next year getting buttfucked by a bull. Yeah, but don't worry. We'll import one, just for you.
As long as you hit the center of mass, those guns should kill a Sa'arm with one shot. Which is all you're gonna get, anyway. Even if the Sa'arm don't get you, nobody except a full-grown Marine can handle the kick without injury. The guys who set this up figured that would cut down on weapon-related crimes. If it was real and you live, they'll fix your shoulder. If you shoot one of those guns and you weren't shooting at a real live Dickhead, they probably won't fix your shoulder.
So, in a Sa'arm incursion, every spoke would have the Monitor handing elephant guns out to all his buddies, repeating to each one "Don't fire until you see the whites of their eyes. Don't fire until you..."
Does that count as a militia? The Hall Monitors are all both trained and organized, but they're leading a mob that isn't either trained OR organized. -ZM
See Also
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