His command module was silent.
A waves of his hand from the bed and the screen showed the date and time.
"Fok. I've been sleeping for 24 hours. Abathar, what did you do to me?" he asked.
Silence.
"Fok, now what are they up to out there?"
25/05/2167 09:05:00
"Is there anything else on my schedule for this morning?" asked Carpenter. "Negative, you are now free until 13:30," replied his computer.
Carpenter removed his uniform jacket, tossed it onto one of the two chairs in front of his desk and continued walking to the window. He took a minute to enjoy the Bay. it was dead calm this morning, the water undulating against the dock pilings. Not a good day to take the boat out he decided. But a good day for other things he thought, and his mouth pulled back into a small smile.
He turned to his main screen and the day's real work started.
"Show me the Captain's progress, give me a tracking path showing his starting point to his current point," he ordered. A flick of the wrist and point to the main screen lit it up with the progress map.
"Server demand? Audio only," said Carpenter.
"Server demands are down by 25% from peak."
Carpenter turned back to the screen showing the Captain's progress. He made a fist, opened all his fingers wide, and the screen enlarged until he flicked his thumb to stop it.
"The Captain is good, he's taking advantage of that terrain and seldom leaves himself very far from a decent defensive position. He's not running blindly. Smart. It's what I would have done," he said aloud knowing nobody would ever hear it.
Too bad he was stupid and aimed himself at me, he said to himself and he shook his head. Too bad.
But stupid or not, it's time to get this under way, he thought.
"System. Advise Chairman and marketing we're starting the day's activities." A flick of the fingers sent that information outbound.
"Communications, Team Leaders," he ordered.
Three "Yes Sirs," echoed into his ear feeds.
"Team 3 and 4, move into ghost appearance range on the flanks but do not engage or move closer. Team 2 move those rear troopers up to firing range. Team 2 is cleared for a ten-minute engagement.
Do not go to full concentration mode, in other words do not and I repeat, do not kill any of them.
I want a standoff but a longer one. I want a lot of energy bursts and a few nonlethal hits for the lunch break. Confirm," said Carpenter.
"Confirmed Sir. No concentrated firepower, no kills, but lots of tracer rounds for the vids."
"Do it. At the 9:30 time slot. And I don't want any mistakes."
25/05/2167 09:30:00
All four walls of the large open tech wing now showed different views of the chase action. Each trooper's eye feed occupied one screen, several satellites beamed overhead views and camouflaged cameras in that location gave ground views. Standing in the middle of a large open space in the middle of the room, Lieutenant Palmer was directing what went live and what stayed hidden.
"Gentlemen, it's our turn to shine, put your game faces on," ordered Lieutenant Palmer.
Fok, don't let me screw up, he thought. Don't let me screw this one up.
Secretary Carpenter's voice came into his ear feed. "Ready Lieutenant?"
"Yes sir, we're ready here," he replied.
He stood motionless, hands at his side, watching the main clock wind down to noon.
"Stations alert. Countdown from ten beginning... now," he said.
Precisely at the count of zero, he raised his arms over his head and all screens in the tech wing went live at the same time broadcasting their contents out to the city.
Palmer pointed to the main screen, reached to his right and pulled in Captain Fraser's feed.
The audience heard Fraser's voice, "Rear, point, close to me." and saw him scanning around himself and watching his Team take up defensive positions behind rocks.
A wave from Palmer's left hand, and the view turned to Captain Davies view as he navigated through another rock field. He spread his fingers wider and the other Chase Team members views appeared to surround his.
Palmer heard, "Data stream online and measuring individual trooper ratings and how many views each trooper is receiving." He nodded towards the reporting technician.
A second wave from the right hand and the Captain and his Team replaced Davies' Team.
"Data stream established for the Captain and troopers," said a tech.
Palmer nodded understanding and pointed to the ceiling dragging his finger down.
Captain Fraser disappeared and a satellite image showing the relative position of each Team beamed to the city.
"Server demand has reached 80% maximum and stabilized," said a different technician.
Palmer nodded acknowledgement.
"Bring everything online and distribute to all channels," ordered Palmer.
Twenty feeds from each trooper went live, each on its own channel.
"Give me triple main screen, include full feed for Davies, Fraser and main overhead," said Palmer accompanied by a chopping motion of his hand.
The Captain got the first words, "Fire when targets acquired." and his Team opened fire first.
"Audience biometric levels skyrocketing. Engaged analysis," reported Second Lieutenant Chambers from one end of the room.
Palmer nodded.
The city saw energy bolts snapping between the two groups, the intensity was as high as the previous fight.
The Secretary interrupted. "I'm seeing ratings indicating confusion on the skyview. It's too complicated. Dumb it down and focus only on individual feed views," he said.
"Yes, Sir," replied Palmer switching the main views to include the two Captains.
"Mr. Brown - set up graphics programs to explain the movement and shooting of this fight for summary afterwards," ordered Palmer. He got a double click acknowledgement from the technician.
"Mr. Secretary, suggest having the Team equipped with different helmets to identify them from the Captain in overhead shots," said Palmer.
A double click acknowledged this suggestion.
"Viewer numbers have reached 81.5% of the population," came into Palmer's ear feed. He nodded towards the tech.
"Social media trending upwards. Main comments about "live firefight", "unscripted" and "what did Captain do?" are main comment fields," reported Sub-Lieutenant Chambers.
"Pass those along to the Secretary now," ordered Palmer.
Chambers did so and met Palmer's eyes and nodded. Both knew the importance of those numbers and comments.
Palmer continued his ballet dance in the middle of the room, and the walls responded to his every move showing pulsating laser shots from different views as he orchestrated the battle program. He was exhilarated with the show and any butterflies he had were long gone in the excitement of choreographing the most important chase in his young career.
Fok, I hope the rest of it goes as smoothly as this one, he thought.
25/05/2167 10:27:00
Jake sat, as mesmerized as any by the tracer bolts and the exploding rocks. He was amazed at the bravery of troopers as they continued to fight even as the protective rocks shattered in front of them. He watched them dive, roll behind new cover to resume firing as if nothing had happened. He'd always imagined being in a real firefight but seeing one, he knew he'd never want to get close to one, never mind be in it. His game consoles were one thing, but this reality was a level higher than he ever wanted to experience. The first rock that exploded in front of him would be the end of that adventure, he decided.
Fok, I'd crap my pants if that happened to me, he thought.
A feed overlay rolled across telling him a concentration of fire would punch a hole in the suit if the protective systems were overloaded. And while he knew that, watching the battle unfold and seeing the very real possibility of it happening was both extremely exciting and terrifying.
His imagination overclocked and all he
could see in his head was the Secretary, perched high over the city, monitoring feeds and driving his techs to find the hacker responsible for this mess. He was feeling less and less brave by the minute as the battle progressed.
That's Team 2 shooting. That's the Captain doing the running. The bloody Secretary's watching this too. Ah shit! he thought.
After ten minutes of this incredible show of firepower from the heavy-suit weaponry on both sides, Team 2 disengaged as ordered. Jake didn't understand why they retreated but the feeds from both teams showed the new positions, showed the retreat under very heavy fire and the hits causing the helmet-feeds to flare with starbursts as the energy dissipated.
He couldn't decide whether to be excited about the show or sick because he had caused it. He was fascinated by the firepower, but scared even more now he saw the Chase unfolding.
"Class starting in 20 minutes. You have time to make the class if you start immediately," advised his calendar program.
"Fok."
But Jake rolled out of bed, flipped the bed back into the wall and stumbled to the bathroom unit.
25/05/2167 08:35:00
Fifty miles away on the rock field, Team 2 had disengaged and the Captain and his Team relaxed somewhat. A few turned to lean back against the rocks but none stood up to offer himself as a target, just in case the Secretary had snipers out there.
The Captain took a moment to take a few deep breaths and then said, "The Secretary won't waste air time with a sniper right now. This is a warm-up show. Maybe we were on and maybe we're still hidden from the city. It's hard to know until we get into a full battle where they're seriously trying to take us out and not just blowing rocks to hell. We're outside of lunch break hours so we have another five to six hours of run time before they come back to set us up for the evening shows.
We run now but all of you look for a good defensive position on higher ground as we go. If we find one, we make a stand there for tonight's programming. You know the pattern, tonight is likely for real and they'll come a lot harder. But then we'll have the night to either run or regroup."
"Understood?" He looked at each of his men in turn and received a nod from each one.
He and the Sergeant held the look longer than the others. Then they both nodded.
"Head it out people, three-quarter speed, I want those power packs as full as possible, we need every amp you have. There's more where that little action came from and we won't have long to wait. Move with me. Now."
He was quite pleased with his Team and how they had fought. He was certain the Chase Team had orders not to press too hard but still, his men never faltered. They had trained all their lives for moments just like this. While this was their first exposure to a real firefight, as far as he was concerned they'd done well. This was also his first command in a real fight and the only measure of his performance from now on was how many of his Team he lost.
As he ran, he devised and discarded plans for killing the Chase Teams so he could survive this chase. He had to confess he couldn't imagine a successful scenario other than reaching the safe zone and he was certain the Secretary had plans to stop that. But he had to succeed if he wanted to kill that bastard, he just didn't know yet how he'd do it.
25/05/2167 09:20:00
Chairman Gwinnett opened the discussion without preamble, "Give me the backstory and details. I want to pass it along to the board this afternoon."
Carpenter took a deep breath, stood up from his chair, turned to the window facing the Corporate offices before replying, "Sir, tonight is the first big part of the show where we set the hook for the story. We tie Captain Fraser to corruption and theft. By the time we're done with the backstory on the Captain, even his mother wouldn't help him. The vids are all set now, the story voiceovers are done and being evaluated by the marketing and psych teams for impact.
We'll identify his Team as equally bad. We may have to paint one of them, perhaps the Sergeant, as a corrupting influence. It will all come out of the numbers tonight. The audience reaction to each trooper will allow us to pick the lowest trooper response scores and he will become our bad guy. Those troopers with the highest scores will become the poor misguided, but still guilty ones. We'll script the entire thing based on the audience biometrics and response numbers."
Carpenter thought for a second and then continued, "A heads-up to the board, Sir. It is entirely possible we'll lose somebody if we allow the Captain full firepower and attack ten on ten. We still control his suits, so that's up to us."
There was silence on the other end and Carpenter wondered whether there'd been a disconnect. But then the Chairman began again.
"Ah yes, well, how would a real loss on one of our teams impact the ratings? Maybe we should test that out. Lose a man and see what happens. What's the downside? We lose a man - have to pay compensation. But it tells us a great deal about public perception and will be worth the experiment. Comments?"
"Sir, they're my men and I don't want to lose any," replied Carpenter.
"Understood. In this case, the value of the data is worth the price," said Gwinnett
"Yes, Sir."
As the connection disappeared, Carpenter remained at the window staring out over the city and wondered how he might use this bit of recorded information. He couldn't see a way right now but one never knew what the future would bring. That old bastard likely had a few secrets up his sleeve. Maybe the sex angle? That seldom failed with the right target but he had to be careful, Gwinnett was a very powerful man and had his own resources and talents.
25/05/2167 10:05:00
<6t94whp>:"Continue to keep well hidden to see if the newbie responds first. As soon as one of us acts, the others are exposed and in danger. As you've noted, we can't do anything without Security knowing there's been outside interference. We can't run and hide on this one. This could be what we're waiting for, an armed Team that's willing to fight the Secretary, or it might pass. If it passes, the newbie has to be the only casualty. He's backed off and seemingly offline so we'll have to step in when the Secretary starts to kill them. Agreed?"
They all agreed, but they all knew this game had barely begun and it would become much more active in the next few hours.
25/05/2167 11:45:00
The Captain and his Team crested a small knoll in the rock field and the Captain ordered a halt.
"Gentlemen, this is beyond what any of us has ever had to run on this route and about half of the way to the safe zone. I believe only two runners have ever reached this area and one of them was caught only a few miles further along by Chase Team 3. He was then spared by the vote. The other had made it to the safe zone ahead of Team 2 but there were whispers that run had been "adjusted" by Chairman Gwinnett himself for a rather large stock transfer. Who really knows about those things?"
The Sergeant said, "Nobody we've ever chased ever got this far. That's why we're the best, Sir."
"You have it precisely Sergeant. Anybody disagree with that assessment?" asked the Captain.
The men laughed easily for t
he first time since they started running.
"I thought that might be the case," said the Captain. He continued, " We hold up here, establish defensive positions, stay together on this one. We have a 360-degree view from here so we hold tight as a group to maximize firepower. Take outward-facing positions in a circle, pick the larger granite rocks, avoid those weaker and smaller sandstone ones. They won’t take much energy before shattering. Be prepared to move on my command to face a concentrated group. I suspect they'll push but not too hard. I doubt they'll want a kill tonight but accidents have been known to happen and there's a lot of firepower coming our way. First though, every second man stand down for twenty-minute break and rotate starting with the Sergeant and moving clockwise."
He didn't add that he thought tomorrow would likely be a bitch.
Sergeant Price arranged the Team around the top of the knoll, pointed out fire lanes and discussed the details of location and potential problems with each trooper.
The Captain smiled as this happened, they were good men, good people, and it was a total screw job to be sure, he thought. How many would make it through? Not all of them; the Secretary wouldn't allow that. If that bastard decided to release his full armory, we won't stand a chance, not a single chance in hell.
He looked around at his men and said, "I told every second man to take a break. You're going to want that rest very soon now. We take the breaks when we get them."
He leaned back against his own rock and his mind wandered. Damn I hope I do the right thing when my time comes up. I know that clock's ticking.
He set a ten-minute alarm and closed his eyes.
25/05/2167 11:55:00
The nervous excitement of the last few days had taken a toll on Jake. Waking up, he pulled his head from under the pillow and uncurled after a restless morning nap. The rush of cooler air jarred his brain into a state that was not fully awake but not asleep. What time is it? he thought. Have I missed anything? With full consciousness restored, "Fok," was the first word the computer heard.
Flee or Kill: The Future Of Reality TV (Future Forward Book 2) Page 11