NationStates Jolt Archive

Port-Allanea, Allanean Haven

"So, what are we waiting for?"

The younger man shrugged. "It appears there's some large amount of cops supposed to arrive from Knootoss today. We are to take them to their hotel, you understand."

"How many cops?"

"I don't know. I was told two thousand certificates were sent out."

"Two… thousand… cops? You're joking."

"Well, they hopefully won't all come. But we have lots of buses, and there's a huge hotel we're taking them to. It's a Feinberg Hotels place, with fifty thousand bedrooms and crap."

"Oh look! Knootian Airlines flight 5666-A! It's them! They're landing!"

* * *

The hotel is indeed large – an immense two hundred-story contraption, surprisingly baroque inside and out, built in the best traditions of Greater Prussian architecture. It stands on the very shore of the sea – in fact, one of it's walls actually touches the water.

It is a five-star hotel – again, paid for by the AAPC. The Knootians certainly cannot complain about a lack of charity.

"This is great!"

A herd of Knootian coppers shuffled through the gigantic reception hall of the Allanean hotel. The group was rather out of tune, in their distinctive pale blue uniforms. In many other respects, though, they were your typical tourists - overweight, middle-aged men and women (mostly men) who were clearly not used to the sort of luxuries that this hotel seemed to offer them. Judging by their full suitcases and trolleys, as well as the hideous sunglasses and other items that were part of the uniform of the tourist, they were expecting a holiday.

Without any sort of clear leadership or guidance (but with rather a lot of tense squabbling in the Dutch language) the Knootian coppers checked in, not to emerge from their comfortable hotel rooms until so directed by the Allaneans.

Foreigners – having not known what the nation was like before – would have not noticed it was in a state of flux, of change. The newspaper discussed new Constitutional amendments, military and legal reforms, and the upcoming election, as well as the receding economic downturn. But this would be nothing – to what would be strange to the Knootians.

First of all, while a lot of the people wore whatt would seem to the Knootians to be 'ordinary clothing', there would still be some people who seemed to be unaware that dress codes – or modesty – existed. People in assless fursuits, sci-fi uniforms, and mohawks were just the tip of the iceberg. Second, actual cops – the few that appeared – did not wear uniforms at all, rather preferring simple star-shaped badges pinned to their clothing – though they preferred not to wear stuff that was too conspicuous.

And of course, everybody wore guns – as well as more esoteric knives, swords, and even, sometimes, spears. Most of the weapons were worn openly, as if the Allaneans were somehow not embarassed by their presence. This site, alone, made clear why the place was a good place to go for training.

But in the meanwhile, the course was to begin in a week – and the Knootians had their chance to look around and take a break in Allanea's largest city.

In the week they had, the Knootian coppers were to follow the "traditional" touristic routes - essentially whatever the tourist stalls might offer as nice alternatives.

Shamelessly, they would take pictures of the strangely-dressed Allaneans. The suits, the spears, and the general craziness. Although Knootian laws were rather liberal, people of all races and persuasions generally did have a sense of decorum.

Architecturally, however, the sprawling Allanean capital city was not so very different from Knootcap, bar perhaps the utter lack of high-rising buildings and public transport. The Knootian metropolis from which these police officers hailed also sprawled out from the Western part of Knootoss, encompassing the largest cities as well as the very heart of the country. The postmodern 'network city' of the DDR was tied together by the endless infrastructure of the Delta metropolis, a planologists wet dream. Indeed, endless suburbs and highways was not at all what the Knootians had come to see. Here, at least, the weather was a little better and the air more breathable.

Of course there was also some disaster tourism - looking for the residual effects of recent nuclear bombardments and the like. Whatever else the gun-crazy nation would have to offer in terms of tourist attractions depended on the available guides.

Admittedly, Liberty-City doesn't have a lot of pretty craters for you to watch, but there are other attractions. Liberty-Lane still hasn't been fixed after the fighting in the last coup – and as usual, passers-by grumble about the Queen's government not being able to fight 'their own goram front porch'.

As for attractions, there were the usual 'entertainment centers' known in Knootoss as well – casinos, 'coffee shops', and so forth. More interesting perhaps to the visitors was the Liberty-City Convention Hall – a giant, multy-story building that was, in fact, multiple convention halls – and where, except for the annual AllaneaCon and Shot Show, multiple conventions were hosted at any given time.

There were musea – with the usual art, though Allaneans shied away from the abstract and tended towards impressionism – or even realism and classicism. There were also monuments – of which the most interesting would be Congress with it's immense hall, allowing for over 8,500 delegates and ever-changing 'endorsement count' system.

And of course, there were the race circuits – several of them, one in the very city. Automotive racing, just as several kinds of wrestling, airsoft, and competitive gaming, were popular sports in Allanea – all spectator sports, naturally.

It remained to be seen what of it would interest the coppers.

None of the attractions mentioned were of particular interest to Knootians, but many of them indulged in a bout of shopping or gambling, taking advantage of the relatively low prices in Allanea.

After a while, though, officers began to wonder when they were actually going to receive any training with guns...

Some time later

Of course, eventually the buses did arrive, and they did take the Knootians to the Front Sight facility.

Visualize, if you will, a giant patch of sand upon which a variety of strange training facilities are interspersed – indoor ranges, outdoor ranges, martial arts facilities, even facilities for driving lessons and weird mock-ups of buildings for urban warfare training. From the background, noises of gunfire – pistols, shotguns, automatic weapons- are heard.

On the parking lot, a smiling, muscular Allanean wearing dark-blue pants with lots of pocket, a white shirt with the words: “FRONG SIGHT STAFF” on it, greets the Knootians.

“Hi. Welcome to Front Sight.”

From the way they looked around (wide-eyed) it was obvious that none of the Knootians had ever seen anything like this. For starters, giant patches of sand like that did not exist in Knootoss - nor were there gigantic facilities such as these where the police could train. The military did maintain a few overused patches of carefully constructed "nature" for training purposes, but nothing like this. Besides, the military was a professional choice and one that not many of the men in blue had taken.

Upon direction by the Allaneans the Knootian police officers eventually formed a disorganised mob, which was talking loudly amongst itself to share their holiday experiences as the Front Sight staffer presented himself.

Eventually, though, things quieted down and they gave him their full attention.

The Knootians were led into a large, airconditioned 'building' – rather, a single flat box. Inside, soft mats covered the floor, as if to protect someone from falling.

On two of the walls, large posters (http://www.a-human-right.com/s_safetyrules.jpg) hung, and at the back, there was a table covered with guns – not real guns, but bright-colored lookalike guns, of course.

The instructor spoke loudly and clearly, but without agression in his voice.

“Good day, gentlemen. Today, and for the first half of the course, we will not be dealing with real firearms before. First of all, because I would like to give you all a refresher on basic safety, and second – and more importantly - because you are police officers. It is very often in police careers – and in general civilian lives – that, when firearms do get used, they get used at really close distances – a distance at which your firearm often is nearly touching the other person. It is at this distance that the firearm is least effective. It is also the distance at which a criminal may attempt to attack you in order to try and wrestle your firearm away from you, to use it against you or simply to steal it and sell it. As such, you must learn how to practice disarm and counter-disarm moves, to disarm criminals and prevent them from disarming you.”

“It is at close range that firearms are least effective – because when your gun is nearly touching my face, I can move rapidly to the right or left to get out of your line of fire, to wrest the gun away, or to simply kick you in the shin and then beat you to death – or do a thousand of other unpleasant things. So as I said – we'll first learn the use of firearms in these nasty situations, before we move on to actually learning how to shoot. Any questions before we begin?”