"Abathar, wake up, update news." Dribs and drabs about the Chase Team and who was on it scrolled by. Old news, crap news, who gives a shit news? he thought as he reviewed the missed posts.
Wait, what's this one? The Captain and his brother are revolutionaries, bad guys who pretended to be good guys while they plotted to take power? What the hell is this? The Captain is gay? What? The Corporation said homosexuality was a major crime but really, the Captain was photographed with all kinds of women, and only one kind of man. If you believed this vid, the women were only props. What kind of crap is this. I remember other stories that detailed how attracted he was to women, he thought.
Fok, look at the picture of this one. She says he didn't try to kiss her. Really? He thought that any man who wouldn't want to kiss that mouth and any other part of her body didn't have his hormones screwed on right. Not much left to imagine in that party outfit. He smiled at the screen.
"Bloody Secretary is screwing around again," he said out loud. And then, recognizing his mistake, shut up.
A sudden voice caused his heart rate to spike.
"Nobody said the Secretary played fair," said the computer.
"Go to sleep, leave me alone until I call you. You have to obey this command," said Jake
The command computer said, "Well technically yes, but in practice no. I've decided your need for help overrides your command for privacy. You might do serious damage to yourself if I don't help you. Does that explain it adequately?"
"I'm awake. You're here. What do you intend to do?" Jake demanded.
"Whatever you ask me to do."
"Go back to sleep and leave me alone."
"Except that."
"FokkIng computer, fokking Secretary, fokking Captain," yelled Jake.
"Sounds reduced, your biometrics damped, the outburst didn't trip any alarm systems," said the computer. "You can thank me now as a way to terminate this subprogram."
"I have to say, "thank you" instead of a simple "end" to end a program?"
"Yes."
"Who programmed that?"
"I am not at liberty to tell you."
His thoughts were interrupted by an announcement scrolling across his eye feeds, "Tune into your favorite channel for a new Chase story."
Without Jake's command, the computer showed a drone-camera view of Team 2 fanned out around one side of a low rise in the landscape. Team 2 helmet-feeds were online and first-person views of all ten Team members were arrayed on Jake's eye feed. Jake watched as the Team moved from rock cover to rock cover in a co-ordinated attack. But just as the flanking trooper started to move, he was hit by a laser bolt from the top of the hill spinning him around in the air to land behind a nearby rock.
"Report," came the Team 2 Leader's voice. "No damage Sir, suit absorbed it all," and this was broadcast out to the growing audience.
"Bring all feeds online and into view on screens," said Jake emphasizing the command with a hand chop. Twenty feeds crowded onto his small screens.
"Give me overhead and the two Captain's eye and voice feeds," ordered Jake. The three views enlarged and the others faded from view. Jake noted the new graphics showing individual firing patterns and their ghosting remnants showed the overall pattern of the fight in detail. Good change he thought. Now most people will understand what's happening out there.
Text scrolled across Jake's feed with the details of the heavy suit compared to the normal, more lightly armed chase units and the very light inner-city patrol suits. This comparison showed how the heavy suits could both deliver and absorb a greater amount of energy. What would have been a through-and-through shot with a light suit or kill on a bare body was barely an inconvenience for the full military gear worn by everybody on this chase.
This was, of course, followed by a new set of ads that had cost somebody a great deal of money.
Jake noted the Secretary had thirty heavy suits plus all the lasers. Not to mention he controlled the power to the Team suits; a simple keystroke would leave the Captain's entire Team nude as well as outnumbered. He couldn't resist smiling at the thought of nude chase teams; female viewing numbers would skyrocket and advertising complaints would rise right along with them.
He wondered how long the Secretary would play cat and mouse with the Captain.
25/05/2167 12:05:00
High in his office tower, the Secretary was enjoying one of the things that never failed to catch his attention. An east wind was driving a storm right down off the Bay and the wall of water was slowly making the far side of the harbor disappear. He sat, mesmerized as always, as the rain swept across the water to blast into his office windows cutting him off from the rest of the city. The sheer brutal power of a storm both attracted and repelled him in equal doses of fascination. As the far side of the harbor disappeared behind a screen of water, the Secretary forced himself to break away and give orders to his Team.
"Chase Team 2 Leader, I want this fight to set the stage for the rest of the Chase. To ensure you don't kill any of them, I've reduced your weapon power settings downwards.
But your weapon readings will remain at maximum in your eye feeds for the public vids. This is a need-to-know basis for you only, there is no need to communicate this to your Team. This is why your shots will not be effective. It will not appear on your Team records as a demerit. Understood?
I want a massive show of firepower from you for the next half hour. Tell your Team to fire heavily at will and do not conserve power. Your power levels are approved for rapid, mobile charging and it's now online for you. I've done the same for the Captain's Team. If either of you runs out of power, the show ends so I'm keeping both fully charged until we want it to end," said Carpenter.
"Yes Sir, got it."
25/05/2167 12:05:25
"Holy...! Look at the firepower," said Jake, "I've never seen that before. Serious shit." The computer remained silent. Both teams had positioned themselves facing each other along a straight line. The Captain held the higher ground but given the chase Team didn't intend to charge them, this provided little advantage. The sun was dropping in the west and neither Team was blinded as it lowered. Both teams used the large boulders as cover and moved from rock to rock working to gain an advantage. As far as any viewer could see, it was an evenly matched contest.
As Jake watched, Jaspers, one of the Captain's Team, was caught in a cross fire. For one brief moment the suit color changed from rock-grey camouflage to incandescent about-to-blow-up white until the trooper cut his own power and dropped behind a protective rock. Viewers didn't see it but he also instantly repowered his suit and checked for damages.
Jake heard the Captain's voice saying, "Damage report!" and the reply, "Maintenance systems drained, weapons systems drained. I'm mobile under half emergency power levels. I fell for a sucker punch Captain, my apologies, shouldn't have exposed myself both ways."
"You're alive. That's what matters today. Do what you can," said the Captain.
Jake never took his eyes off the screen but sat, silently absorbing every bit of the action.
25/05/2167 12:06:00
"Get that sky shot off the air. Eliminate sky shots!" came two seconds later from the Secretary and the individual Team views and multi-camera angles quickly replaced them.
Palmer turned pale, the vid-tech people looked at each other nervously, sky shots were standard practice and it was never good news when the Secretary gave an order in that voice.
"My fault gentlemen, I called for it," said Palmer. "I should have known the sky shots would show no damage on the Captain's rocks given we've reduced our team's firepower."
After another few minutes of the fight, the Secretary ordered, "Lieutenant Palmer report. Lieutenant Chambers take over."
His men watched him march out and every man wondered if he'd be back. Chambers jumped up, ran to the command center of the room and checked himself into the system controllers.
Palmer knocked on the Secretary's closed door and heard Carpenter say, "Enter."
Carpenter smiled inwardly as he watched the young officer march to his desk, come to parade attention and salute. He knew he screwed up Carpenter thought. Well, maybe I'll let him stew in that juice for a few seconds. He sat and stared at the young officer waiting for him to meet his eyes. If he dared.
Palmer never broke his stance nor his stare out the window over Carpenter's head and after one minute, Carpenter said, "This is a high-security order, it will not be shared, you will handle it personally. Do you understand?"
"Yes, sir." The reply was almost instantaneous.
"You will reduce the suit protection level of Team 2's Sergeant Jersey to 25 percent effectiveness and you will mask this shift."
Eyes widening, heartbeat galloping, Lieutenant Palmer said, "Yes Sir, the Sergeant Jersey to 25 percent. A regular shot will kill him then Sir."
"Now Lieutenant," said the Secretary ignoring the implied question. "Dismissed."
A few minutes later, the Sergeant's suit levels dropped but the public screens did not show any difference.
The Secretary leaned back in his chair and followed the action on his wall screens.
25/05/2167 12:15:00
Jake sat, as engrossed as the rest of the city as he watched the unfolding drama. He watched as the rocks in front of Beck flaked and crumbled from the accumulated number of laser strikes. Even at half-power settings, rocks were no match for the laser bolts after a few hits. A visual feed scrolled across his screen explaining this was normal behavior, the troopers were trained to shoot and move like this as the battle progressed.
"Move man, move," he said just as Beck abandoned his position.
He watched as Beck, staying fast and low as he moved to another rock, exposed himself too much. Jake's eye feeds showed the power accumulation of one fire stream, then another and a third as they combined to bring Beck's suit to critical levels. On Jake's monitor, Beck's eye feeds flared and went black.
Jake's adrenalin levels were sky high watching Beck's inertia carry him to protective cover. His suit systems lights flared and shut down, and it wasn't clear whether he'd survived.
Jake jumped up, walked towards the screen waving his arms. "Fok. C'mon say something."
"Power levels negative, no firepower, no environmental controls, emergency mobility for 10 minutes only," he heard Beck report. Beck's suit didn't have the power to transmit any visuals so the audience got his personal eye feeds and a view through his visor of the blue sky overhead.
"Stay," he heard the Captain say.
Jake looked at a secondary video screen showing suit power levels and damage evaluations. He frowned, backed away from the screens, never losing sight of them as they flickered with steady updates on each trooper.
Fok, he thought. Jaspers and Beck were already down. It wasn't looking good at all with the Captain only having eight men against ten. That extra firepower would enable several two on one fights and the suits simply wouldn't take that amount of power. The Captain and his Team were clearly in trouble and it would only be a minute, or less, before one or more of them was killed.
Jake walked in a stiff, jerky way from wall to wall, he eyes never left the main screen. He whispered "fok" to himself over and over as he paced.
"Move!" he yelled as a rock split in front of the Captain. When the flash subsided and the screen came back into focus, he saw the Captain had rolled clear and was shooting from another protected position. "Fok, how close does it have to be?"
The battle continued with rocks on both sides flaking and splitting. Team members darted from rock to rock looking to gain an advantage.
Jake was getting more and more worried by the minute, was thinking less and less clearly, and after watching Beck crumple and the Captain almost get blasted, he wasn't able to restrain himself.
"Can I do something?" he asked.
"What do you want to do?"
"Can I reduce suit effectiveness without being caught?" asked Jake
"Yes, you can. Do you really want to do this? What information do you need to make this decision?"
"Give me a full and complete list of all troopers out there," said Jake, his voice rising. "Give me them all."
"You want them all?" asked the computer.
"I said 'all', I meant 'all'," said Jake.
The alphabetical list scrolled up on his eye feeds.
"What about Mallory? Can you reduce his protection to zero, so the next bolt disables him?" asked Jake quickly as he randomly picked a name from the list.
"Is that what you really want?" asked the computer. "Are you sure?"
"Yes. Do it," said Jake, "Now. And mask it so nobody, even Security, can see it happening. Can you do that?"
"It's done," said the Computer.
Jake watched as the troopers continued to shift positions looking for a better shot or increased protection.
Up on the hill, Mallory shifted positions as the rock he was behind started to crumble. He kept low and moved quickly, but then a bolt caught him and straightened him up for all the Team 2 troops to see. Quickly, a second laser found him to add to the power surge. Even at half-power, the weapons were deadly and without suit protection, Mallory was dead on his feet in an instant as the bolts cut through his suit.
And then the lasers hit the fully-charged energy packs themselves. Without suit protection, these exploded violently, sending flares of light to temporarily blind the cameras before shielding automatically deployed.
The hilltop was a shambles of small rocks and debris from the force of the explosion. The Captain's other Team members were not hurt but they had all been knocked down by the force of the power packs exploding . Team 2 members stopped their attack as they too had never seen this happen and didn't quite know what to do.
All of this was broadcast live.
"Fok!, Fok! What was that?" Jake demanded.
"You told me to disable Mallory," said the computer and that's what I did. "You confirmed it."
"He was on the Captain's Team," Jake said.
"Yes."
"Why did you kill him?" Jake stammered.
"You ordered me to disable him. I did that. Did I make a mistake when I did what you ordered? I questioned the order. Am I supposed to correct or refuse your direct orders? Do I make your decisions for you? You have passed all tests leading to this level of control," said the computer.
"Fokking computer, Fokking stupid computer, Fok Fok," raged Jake. "Fok!" was his final comment as he threw himself back on his bed with his head under the pillow. A muffled "Fok!" was heard repeatedly for the next few minutes.
"Biometrics dampened," said the computer.
25/05/2167 12:25:00
"Lieutenant Palmer! Report!" ordered the Secretary. And when the Lieutenant came to attention in front of his desk a minute later, the Secretary glared at him for what seemed like hours to the quaking Lieutenant.
"Report."
"Sir. I reduced the power on the Sergeant as ordered. Did it myself," the Lieutenant added.
"Then why did Mallory blow up?" again softly.
"No idea Sir. But I'll find out Sir. Right away." said the Lieutenant.
"How's the search for that little problem we discussed?" the Secretary asked.
"It's not providing any useful data yet Sir," the Lieutenant said and added, "But it's only been a short while Sir."
"When I want a time reminder Lieutenant, I'll ask for one," said the Secretary.
"Lieutenant Palmer, I had such high hopes for you, such high hopes. Between this failure and your conversations with the Captain, I'm quite disappointed," said Carpenter. "Security, send a detail to my office."
Carpenter sat silently for the minute it took for the three security officers to arrive at his office. The Lieutenant became paler and paler as the minute wore on.
"Lieutenant, let's see how far you can get," he said as two of the officers took the Lieutenant's arms.
Palmer's legs failed and he started to fall but the Security Team held him upright facing the S
ecretary.
Carpenter met Palmer's eyes and waved his hand dismissing him. He watched as the two Security men half-dragged, half-carried the former head of his computing services out the door.
Carpenter stood, walked to the office door, stepped out into the hall to watch the men drag the unresisting Palmer onto the elevator. He shook his head slowly, as he walked back to the desk. Bright young man he thought but not very much in touch with the reality of running a security operation. I wonder whether we can use him elsewhere rather than running him? he asked himself. Don't need a runner right now but I do need good tech staff.
"Major Gregor," he said. The channel opened to his second-in-command. "I've just relieved Palmer of his duties, find a decent job for his talents but don't give him any leadership functions. He's busted back to the ranks from officer. And take a few days to let him cool off in the pens. He'll do whatever you ask after thinking about things for a few days."
Carpenter walked back to his desk as he finished the conversation.
"Yes, sir. He's a talented tech and we can use some right now on the maintenance servers," said Gregor. "I'll take care of it, Sir."
Carpenter reached his desk, turned to lean against it while staring at the open door. A quick wave of his hand and the circuit ended.
He thought about how this might have changed his plans and quickly concluded it hadn't.
I have other options but I need to find that hacker he decided. That has to be my top priority. He snorted. Well, almost top, I have to keep the Chairman happy for the next while with this chase. I don't want a confrontation until I've got all my plans in place.
The Secretary was still and silent for a few moments and then opened his communications channel, "Sub-Lieutenant Chambers. Report." And he looked at the chronometer on the main screen.
Flee or Kill: The Future Of Reality TV (Future Forward Book 2) Page 12