Sniper Squad

by Meg Buchanan

  Minnie, her mother’s assistant sat at the big desk outside the office door.

  “Hello Ela,” Minnie said when she saw her. “I wondered if we’d see you today.”

  “Hi, Min. Is Mum in?”

  Minnie nodded and swiped something on her desk to open the door. Ela could see her Mum, still in her blue cloak, working at her desk, so she wandered into the office and sat down to wait.

  Her mother looked up gave a small smile, then looked back down at the Tablet she was studying. That small smile was all she expected. Her mother was very formal and restrained with her like all Elite parents were. But she was certain her mother loved her.

  She waited. It was better to let her finish than try to interrupt.

  After a few minutes, her mother closed the document she’d been studying. “How did your afternoon go?” she asked.

  “It was fine, we were doing the viability tests on the 200000, batch.”

  Her mother nodded. “Did they all pass?”

  Ela sighed. “No, I saw a few taken away. What will happen to them?”

  Her mother hesitated before answering. Then she repeated what Bradford had said. “We will give them a few days and then retest them.”

  “What if they fail again?” Ela asked.

  Again, her mother hesitated. “That is the part of this work that is so hard to bear.”

  “They’ll be killed?” Ela asked. She guessed she’d already worked that out. But how could her mother be involved in this? It was inhumane.

  Her mother stood abruptly. “We try to ensure very few babies fail; we do what we can.” She looked out the window and watched the Monorail pass by, then looked back at Ela and changed the subject. “Will you be home this evening?”

  “No, I’m going to the Vids with Amon and Izzy.” Another lie but her mother was so deeply part of the Administration she couldn’t tell her the truth.

  Ela walked slowly to the elevator that would take her back to the entrance of Humicrib. What they were doing to those babies was so unfair Sometimes the work Humicrib did seemed reasonable. Humicrib cloned the babies and saved the world.

  And sometimes when she wondered if she was doing the right thing trying to bring down the Administration and Humicrib something like the viability test would happen to remind her that no matter how easy life was for her as an Elite, the whole system was wrong.

  She waited for the display to show the twentieth floor then the doors of the elevator opened, and she stepped in. Those babies were real and Humicrib treated them as units to be sold.

  It was especially bad as she knew the effects of Genus6 could be reversed. She was the living proof of it. Only a few people knew about that now but soon everyone would. That was what Jacob and the other resistance leaders around the world were working towards, and why what Nick and Curly were doing was important.

  She watched the City, the horizon and the harbour. Then as the elevator got closer to the ground, the buildings close to this block got bigger and bigger. The Administration was as ruthless with people as they were with buildings. They destroyed the old City to have room to build the hospital for Humicrib and the office blocks for themselves, and they kept the Locals under control and frightened so they could harvest their genes. Nick and Jacob were right. The Administration had to be stopped.

  The elevator halted, and the doors opened. She’d go and find out what Nick wanted.

  She wandered across the road. A few EcoSelfDrives passed her but most people didn’t bother with a private car. They took the Monorail because it was faster, so only high ranked officials bothered with their own vehicle these days.

  The City glowed in the late afternoon sun. The blank silver faces of the buildings took on the yellow light, and the colour of the tiles softened. She really wanted to run to the Station to find out why Nick had risked Txting her twice. Whatever he wanted to show her had to be big.

  But she forced herself to wander slowly and watch the Vid displays in the shop windows. Clothes, shoes, a new eBike. If she’d been with Izzy and the others, she would have had to behave the way they did. Talking about what she wanted to buy and going into the bike shop to try out the new bike Amon wanted. But because she was on her own the only thing she had to remember to do was walk slowly.

  Finally, she could see the corner that led to the entrance of the old Britomart Station. She shrugged off her cloak, folded it over her arms and hugged it to her. The cloak never quite became invisible when she used the HazeApp. Bits of hem flicked out of the Haze as she walked so it was better to carry it. She gripped her Com and judged her moment. It was important to Haze just at the right time so the people behind her assumed she’d turned the corner, and the people coming up the street she turned into didn’t see her at all.

  This always made her nervous no matter how often she did it. Having the HazeApp on her Com could get her arrested. Amon had stolen it for the fun of it. He didn’t know that he was the reason the Resistance Cell had it and used it now. The other problem was, why would she want to be invisible if she was Elite? Elite tended to want to be seen and admired.

  As she turned the corner, she hit the App on the screen of her Com and saw first her hands and then the rest of her shimmer for a moment and disappear. There was still that effect in the air you get when alcohol is added to water, but people only noticed it if they knew what to look for. The important thing when you were nearly invisible was to not bump into anyone.

  Ela made it to the open square outside the entrance of the underground station, with its benches and trees, without being noticed. Britomart had escaped being demolished when the MonoRails were built in the City. The entrances had been boarded up and the tunnels forgotten. Perhaps the Administration had had some plan to use them, but it never happened.

  The Resistance used the Station to hide Locals that needed to lay low for some reason, and to meet when they had something to discuss that couldn’t be overheard. There weren’t too many places you could escape surveillance from the DroneCams, but this was one of them.

  She walked across the open area and checked that no one had followed her and then went down the wide concrete steps to the boarded-up entrance that was now really a door. She checked again she was alone, then sent the code that would open the door for her. The kid monitoring the entrance would know she was expected and would see the Haze and her heat signature on his screen, and he’d let her in.

  Chapter 5

  NICK SAT DOWN BESIDE CURLY and Curly touched the array on the screen in front of them to bring up whatever it was he wanted him to see.

  “How was Jacob?” Curly asked.

  “His usual grumpy self.” He’d just got back from the Hinterland. Jacob had sent a message he wanted to see him, and it was a hell of a way to spend a night. Getting to the tunnel entrance, running for five k to the end, and then taking the train into Paeroa and Jacob picking him up. Talking to Jacob for a couple of hours then doing it all again in reverse.

  Now he was in the back room with Curly. He’d watch this Vid and then get some sleep.

  Curly paused the Vid on the Screen.

  Nick studied the image in front of him. “Bloody hell.” It looked like the Administration’s main office building and as if a bomb had gone off. The date and time signatures said yesterday afternoon.

  But he hadn’t authorised anything. And as far as he knew, there were no other Resistance Cells in the City. “What’s that?”

  “You tell me.” Curly waved his hand and started the Vid again, then rewound it twenty minutes.

  At first it looked like any other Vid he’d seen of Vector Troops in action. StealthHovers unhazed as they landed. Mambas. Troop carriers. The wings lifted and the VTroopers in their uniforms with the silver V’s across their chests from shoulder to waist, poured out and surrounded the building forming a perimeter the way they always did.

  “Here it comes,” said Curly.

  A smaller hover UnHazed. A Viper this time. A group of maybe a dozen Troopers came down the
ramp. They were still in black, but their uniforms didn’t have the silver V the other Troopers had.

  He watched the squad listen to the guy leading them and then take off in different directions in pairs, the identification code for each Trooper at his feet. It wasn’t the same soup of numbers he could see for the VTroopers, the numbers were red not white. And VTroopers never worked in pairs, and they didn’t run. They formed up in battalions and marched relentlessly at their target. This was different.

  “What are they doing?”

  Curly fast forwarded the Vid through the Troopers entering the building and taking the stairs, and then he paused it again. The DroneCam seemed to have pulled back, or whoever had edited this had switched to a different Drone, now the view was a panorama of the CityScape.

  Curly pointed to the top of three buildings. “Here, here, and here,” he said. “Snipers.”

  Nick could just make them out. A blur of black, a glint of steel. But it was the pair of numbers on top of each building that really gave them away.

  Curly started the Vid again and let it run for a while, and it focussed on two of the snipers. They even had a chat about why they were there. Then he saw one of them see something, the DroneCam picked up what he’d seen, a mother and child running out onto the deserted street. Nick’s heart was in his mouth. But the snipers didn’t shoot. Something about glare from the sun one of them said.

  Curly stopped the Vid. “This happened less than a kilometre from here and only yesterday. I’d say that unit Jacob told us about is now operative, and we need to decide if it makes any difference to our plans.”

  “Who else has seen this?”

  “Everyone.”

  “What do Tom and Jake think? They’re the ones installing the next two shields.”

  “They want to do it still. Should we postpone?” Curly asked.

  Nick shook his head then nodded at the screen. “Jacob said things had changed, I guess he knew about this. We’ve only got two shields left to put in place then we’re ready. Jacob thinks it’s worth the risk. Every Cell in the world is set up waiting for our signal. By the end of the week Jacob’s message can go out. As long as the attack is coordinated. It should work. We need to be ready too. We’ve got right on our side, and we’ve got the numbers.”

  Curly picked up a stylus and played with it. “But they’ve got gunships and lasers.”

  Nick shrugged. “Five million Locals, against one hundred and thirty thousand Elite, and only half of them are troopers, we can do it.” To his own ears it sounded like he was trying to convince himself as much as Curly. When they first came up with this plan it had sounded great. But now it was about to happen, he wasn’t so sure. Who picked a fight with the whole world and won?

  Curly put the stylus down firmly. “They won’t be able to do a bloody thing with their infrastructure disabled.”

  Nick nodded. With only two shields to go, Jacob was right, it was worth the risk. Then Jacob’s message would signal all the cradles around the world to take back control. They’d hold the world to ransom, no more babies if the Locals in each country weren’t given their lands back. In New Zealand, 140,000 Elite, 5 million Locals. It was probably the same sort of proportion in the cradles right around the world

  Nick stretched and yawned. “We need to get the kids out of the university before Jacobs message goes out. No hostages for Vector, means no leverage.”

  Curly nodded, then the Screen that monitored the entrance came on. Someone outside had activated the motion sensor.

  Curly rolled his office chair across to the Screen. “It’s Ela.” He spoke to the guard. “Let her in,” he said, then eased himself out of the chair and grabbed his walking stick. “I’ll bring her back here.”

  “I’m sure she knows the way.” Nick was too tired to get up, besides he knew Curly liked Ela. And why not, she was hot.

  Curly grinned and limped to the door. He’d been Interrogated by Vector two years ago and the leg they’d broken never mended properly. It would take him a while to get out front.

  Nick leaned back and rested his eyes. He’d had different plans for last night and then Jacob’s message had come through and he’d had to cancel. But, going to Jacob’s had been worth it. Now he knew for certain everything would be in place by the end of the week and then Vector wouldn’t know what hit them.

  His plans had involved Angel and Victoria. When he got back to the Station, it was Victoria on guard duty, and the way she’d run her hand down his arm was all promise.

  He’d tell Ela what was going on and see if she knew anything, and then he might go to bed. He’d find Angel, then maybe get someone to relieve Victoria. There had to be some perks to being in charge here.

  He sat up again and touched the small image on the array that showed the foyer. Yep, Victoria was still there.

  He watched her key in the code to open the door and saw Ela come in. Yep, Ela was hot.

  “Is Nick here?” she asked. He could see what Jack and Curly saw in her. The long dark hair down to her backside, the grey eyes, leg to her armpits, and those clothes the Elite girls wore left nothing to the imagination. Victoria was all right, and so was Angel, but there was something about Elite girls that drew him in. The sexy clothes, the makeup, the glossiness.

  Victoria nodded and pushed the door shut again. “He’s in the back room.” They all called it the backroom, but it was really his office, the one space at the Station he kept as his own, sometimes he even slept there if something was happening and he needed to keep an eye on it, but mainly it was his command centre.

  Then Curly appeared and Ela followed as he limped through the empty area where there must have been small shops and the ticket office when the Station was originally built. It looked derelict now. They kept it and the other four entrances like that on purpose in case anyone started snooping around the old Station.

  Then Ela and Curly went through the door to the area that had been the Station’s platform. He switched to the next feed and watched them walk past the railway lines to one side. The rest of the area was taken up with Screens and Monitors showing the feeds from the DroneCams around the City. Dozens of kids about Ela’s age, a couple of years younger than he and Curly were, were sitting in front of Screens watching the various feeds. They were all Locals. Kids forced to go to University, so they’d be available when Humicrib needed to harvest their genes. They knew their families were in danger if they didn’t cooperate, so they did what was expected of them, but they hated the Administration as much as he and Curly.

  The kids were all checking for anything usual and keeping the Cell safe by sending out early warnings of extra surveillance.

  The next feed showed them going through the Coms room. It had originally been the control centre for the Station, now Curly used it to monitor the Administration communications.

  He watched as Ela and Curly passed the kitchen and dining room. Hundreds of other kids were coming and going around them.

  Nick waved at the Screen to reduce the feed from that Cam and bring up the array of all of the feeds. Curly and Ela were about to come into the office, and he didn’t want either of them to think he was stalking anyone.

  “Hey,” he said as they walked through the door. He was just in time. “Did you have trouble getting away?”

  Ela shook her head and put the folded cloak onto a chair sitting near the table. Nick knew she’d leave it there until she was about to go out again. This was the only place in the City where being Elite wasn’t a good idea.

  “Just had to tell a few lies,” said Ela.

  “The usual then?” Nick said with a grin.

  “Yes.” She looked at the VidScreen he’d been watching with Curly. “Has something happened?”

  Nick nodded. “You remember Jacob saying he’d heard a whisper about a new squad. A sniper squad trained in urban combat?”

  She nodded. “Yeah vaguely. I didn’t take too much notice. It didn’t seem to have anything to do with me at the time. What about i
t?”

  “Curly picked up this feed from a DroneCam. It looks like the squad Jacob was talking about. As far as we can work out, this is a recording of a training exercise.” He flicked on the Vid and pointed to the rubble and bodies lying near a building. “This doesn’t look real; it looks like the scene has been set up like the building has been bombed but there’s really no damage. And if it was bombed, we didn’t do it so who would have?” He pointed at the corner of the building. “Watch this,” he said and started the Vid again so Ela could watch it.

  Ela studied the Vid of two troopers up on the roof, lasers ready.

  “What do the others think?” Ela asked. She would know everyone would have seen this Vid already. It was always better to share information, and that was the way he and Curly did things here.

  Curly leaned back against the wall. “Keep going. They think that unit won’t make any difference.”

  Ela looked at Nick for confirmation, though he wasn’t sure why. He never was cautious, and they needed those shields in place before Jacob put his plan in action.

  He nodded. “Jacob agrees. It’s still, go into the building, do the job and then get out the way it’s always been. With the HazeApp and a bit of care Tom and Jake can get it done without Vector even knowing they’re around.”

  “So, it’s already decided,” she said. “We keep going and finish off what we’ve started. We just be more careful?”

  “Yep.” They might be willing to do what it took to damage the Administration’s infrastructure, but when they took control of the country, they didn’t want any more casualties or damage than strictly necessary.

  Nick waved his hand past the VidScreen and it turned off. “Yeah. I think that’s the way to go.”

  Did it make any difference to what they had planned? They only had two more shields to put in place and they were finished their preparations. Did a small squad of snipers make that plan more difficult to achieve?