Businesses and residential areas were inside the Ring in its main inner surface. The industrial capacity of the Rings came from the huge factories that ran inside its outer shell. Helium-3 processing plants were placed right next to the huge fusion torsion chambered generators that fed the Ring the energy it demanded. The Rings typically held a population of two hundred and fifty thousand, with fifty thousand usually off-Ring at any point in time at their work places, be it zero gravity medical factories or gas miners. Most worked inside the nanofactories, processing plants, and hydroponics facilities of the Ring.
As Exsid watched the droids clean up the bodies and hide those so the general populace would not see them when the Emergency Signal was turned off, he wondered about the course of events that were taken place. Things went from peaceful to hostile too quickly. These plans the rebels enacted were well thought out and probably had been planned for years. The police were not even aware of what was happening, at least at Exsid’s level. Exsid was a Senior Detective of the Police of Jupiter Ring Three. If he didn’t know then who did? Exsid thought. It had to catch everyone by surprise. Exsid wondered how the security RI’s didn’t catch onto anything.
Something didn’t feel right about the government saying the Silver Hearts were responsible for all this. Exsid was even a member at one point. The Silver Hearts only campaigned for Senate representation peacefully. They have never resorted to violence before and even after the incident with Darvin’s father occurred.
All of these thoughts disturbed Exsid to a great degree. He knew this was not the end of the events happening here. People were mad and the politicians seemed to be going along with the population’s mood. Something bigger was happening. Exsid could feel it. But what it was, Exsid couldn’t guess to know. He could only hope he could help some people from getting hurt and he could stop something before it happened.
***
Darvin walked down the empty main avenue. He was coming to the point where he could see the beginnings of the park off in the distance, right underneath the curve of the ceiling of the Ring. It brought back memories of his father as he tried to use the zoom feature in his Exovision to bring up an image of the statue. He could have just accessed the Library Server with his Biocomp’s Infolink and looked at a photo of it, but Darvin never appreciated that when it came to that statue. He always needed to see it for himself.
Off to the sides he noticed that the elevators, sunken into the sides of the Ring, were unmoving. They were the sole means to getting to the docking elevator systems and buildings, built on top of what Darvin considered to be the ceiling from his point of view, that were used for getting to and from the non-rotating docking platform in the center of the Ring. But the sides, the ceiling, and the basement floors underneath him were not a single sheet of metal. They hosted a plethora of industrial areas and hydroponics facilities and other designated areas, piping, and warehouses. They hosted a variety of places that could hide an army of a few thousand that seemed to make up the numbers of the Rebels.
It was a common misconception for people on Earth, who thought the Jupiter Rings were nothing more than a shell holding some buildings inside. In reality, the inner section of the Ring that was open and contained the free standing buildings were just a small part of it and only takes up about half of the volume of the Ring. Yet when Darvin looked at the landscape of buildings and trees that dotted the main avenue with the park just visible in the distance, he saw paradise. Everything that could be considered ugly, like the factories and railroads that ran the whole circumference of the Ring to transport goods, was hidden under his feet and only accessible through the massive side elevators or public access ways that were in some of the alleys between buildings. The only thing he could see when walking through the center section of the Ring were the business buildings and the residential areas.
As he looked at the map in his Exovision Darvin had an idea when he spotted a marker. It was the same marker that Exsid placed on the Armory that they found earlier. It was only half a mile away from his current position, and it was two miles from the temporary headquarters. He felt the outside of his leather jacket for the imprint of the items he took before. It was reassuring to him, in case he got caught up in what happened at the park again. Yet, Darvin felt like he wanted some more. Just in case, he thought.
Darvin walked into the alleyway that held the broken wall that Exsid and he used before to enter. As he walked into the alley he noticed that the guard here was one of the Mark IV Police Bots. The main body of the robot was shaped like a disc and had four thick ellipsoid-shaped legs, with actuated foot pedals, attached equidistant from each other at the rim of the disc. Inside the main body was a variety of sensors and launchers. Its main visual sensors were stored in a clear dome that was on top of the center of the disc. The launchers were equipped with pods that floated at head level using a double rotor system and released sonic waves and strobe lights to overload the senses of a human and confuse them. However, with advanced enough Biocomps implanted inside a human, it could negate the effect of those pods. The pods also contained a non-lethal turret that shot heavy bean bags that were designed to knock a person down and unconscious. However, for a person in body armor the bean bags would do little more than give the armor a little shake without even so much as a dent. For that reason the legs each had an automatic turret that held a double barreled low velocity gauss rifle. The legs could detach off of the disc if the main body was destroyed and become a stationary gun platform, but it held a relatively low amount of ammunition that was equivalent to one clip of a normal non-attached Marine Gauss Assault rifle.
Low velocity relative to a hand held gauss rifle the Marines used so it doesn’t puncture through the too many of the side walls of the Ring, Darvin thought to himself. The robot’s visual sensors and two gun turrets on the closest legs rotated and locked onto Darvin, accessing his Biocomp’s identification serial number and his DNA imprint that is loaded into the Biocomp and constantly sampled to insure that the Biocomp is not stolen and that it really was who the Biocomp said it was. A text message from the robot sprawled onto his Exovision as the robot’s synthetic voice also said the words, “Identity confirmed. You may proceed.”
The robot stood down and relaxed into its guard position. If he was not allowed Darvin would have been hit with the pod at first and then those nasty gauss rifle turrets on the thick legs if he pulled out his pistol. Too bad the robots were so expensive to the point where each Police Station only had ten of them. He accessed the private server of the temporary headquarters and found that fourteen of them had survived. Four of them were at the temporary headquarters. Most were on patrol, searching for the Rebels. Two of them were guarding marked buildings, one of those which were the Armory Darvin was standing in front of and that Exsid had marked. The other was a marked building that had the same description of the Armory Darvin and Exsid had found but was discovered by another detective team.
The fact that there was another Armory and that there could be more than just the two currently discovered, on the Ring made Darvin wonder just why they were there. The Marines had their military base floating nearby after all, before it was destroyed by several hundreds of tons of metal ingots slamming into it. And how did the Rebels know about the Armories? Did the Marines place them there so that way the Rebels could find some weapons and thus the Marines would know who they were and where they came from? If that was the case then it failed badly, Darvin thought. The leadership of the Marines was captured and they were faced with receiving orders that were twenty minutes old and could be out of date from new information that the Command Center at Earth wouldn’t have for twenty minutes itself. Forty minutes for new orders after something new pops up unless someone has taken control here. Hopefully Exist finds out the answer to that question, Darvin thought.
In the Arcologies at Earth there were sensors and cameras everywhere and there was no such thing as privacy unless you lived in the lower depths of the Arcologies that expe
rienced more lawlessness and broken surveillance systems. Down there, when sensors went out they were almost never replaced. Gangs took control of buildings as their headquarters and took out the sensors and cameras inside while fortifying it against any police force that could be sent to them. After centuries of those actions, the lower depths were ruled by gangs and anyone living there had to understand and respect whose territory they were in. It was simply not cost effective for those who ruled and owned the Arcologies to stamp down on the people living in the lower depths. Even though the majority of thefts and crime occurred there, they were also the ones who ran the assembly lines of the nanofactories and manufactories. They were the grunts who did the dirty work so that those above them lived a cleaner and healthier life. Almost no one cared about them, and no one seemed to bother to try to stop them.
In the Rings of Jupiter, there were very little in the terms of sensor placement. Hallways and public buildings were monitored. However, the residential areas and private business buildings were not. Invasion of privacy still remained an issue in the Rings to the point where civil authorities and politicians agreed to not follow down the path that the Arcologies of Earth have taken. There wasn’t much crime here with the relatively overall higher educated population of the Jupiter Rings. It was the reason why they had such a small police force for such a large population. This was affecting them right now in this crisis, where if there were more police officers there would not be so much chaos as there was now. But who would have thought all that had just recently happened was possible? Darvin sometimes wished there was a larger budget for the police departments, but he understood that it was not needed nor was it economically feasible to have it when there was no reason for it.
Darvin walked into the building through the torn wall, noting that the wall’s repairing nanobots were still turned off. He looked around the room, hoping to find an Assault Gauss Rifle still locked up along the sides. However, he noticed that the racks were all empty of the rifles and that the locks that would hold them were all broken, seemingly melted apart as if something burned through them. It wasn’t like that before. Did someone steal it? Darvin thought to himself. But Darvin had no Scanner, he could not tell if it was a chemical reaction that melted the lock or if it was nanobots.
“I always wondered what these would feel like when you’re in them,” Darvin muttered quietly to himself as he walked past some of the exoskeletons of the Marines that were still standing there. Some were missing and some were broken apart as if someone only wanted a few parts, while others were completely untouched. Darvin guessed it was the Rebels that had broken into the Armory because of the pieces of broken black exosuit armor that littered the ground outside.
Darvin looked up at the ceiling and spotted a bullet hole riddled dome where a gun barrel still dangled. Darvin wondered how Exsid and himself had missed it when they were here the first time. It was the security system of the room and must have fired at the Rebels after they broke in. That would explain why there were broken armor pieces outside. Some of the Rebels must have been killed. But just like the scene at Police Station Two, Darvin wondered where the bodies were. They didn’t have enough time to take out all of the exoskeletons or all of the ammunition and grenades but they had enough time to carry out their dead or wounded?
This thought unsettled Darvin. They were able to destroy the automated turret. That means that they had to have weapons before they came to here, just like the one who blew up his cruiser before. And they had explosives to blast open the wall that was lined with a titanium shield and they had to have a disassembling EMP weapon in order to disable the nanobots that would have repaired the wall as soon as they destroyed it. How did they get all of these weapons and all of this latest technology? Weapons control in the Jupiter Rings were very strict and almost no one was allowed to own or even carry firearms besides civil authorities, bounty hunters licensed with the government, and bodyguards who graduated from a government run facility.
The bounty hunters themselves were required to operate as part of the Jupiter Police for ten years before they were able to act as a freelance operator. Even then, the only bounties they took came down from the government itself and were always on the random crime lords or highly wanted person that seemed to pop up. Some of the most successful ones even made enough to purchase an intra-system capable ship to travel between the Rings, moons, and other facilities, but was not capable of traveling from planet to planet like the cruise liners or freighters. Some, however, were even capable of boarding merchant spacecraft that were wanted for some reason or another.
Darvin did however pick up five cylinder shaped grenades that were left behind. Three of them were fragmentation grenades while the other two were concussive electromagnetic pulse grenades. He added that to the multi-tool and thermite ammo clips that he had palmed earlier when he thought Exsid was not looking. That multi-tool even had a pair of scissors strong enough to cut through a chain fence. They were perfect if worst came to worst. Because, Darvin thought to himself, this doesn’t feel like it is over.
***
Trev looked over to where Joseph was sitting. He admired the man as much as he feared him. He always figured he was expendable to Joseph if the time ever came. “Where do you need me to be?” Trev asked, breaking the silence.
“You will take the shuttle in the hanger,” Joseph said, referring to the small two person intra-planetary shuttle located in the small hanger of his ship. “You will be required to go to Ring Three.”
“Ring Three? I thought that operation was complete?”
“It is complete. At least in terms of getting the people they wanted,” Joseph said and grabbed for the glass of water in front of him. The ship had artificial gravity, allowing a degree of normalcy within the habitual sections of the ship. Trev wondered how the ship generated enough energy to power it. “Al will want you there to head up getting some answers from an old friend of yours.” He took a drink from the glass.
“I don’t have many old friends. Which one are you referring to?”
“General Sola.”
Trev’s eyes hardened a bit at the name. “I don’t remember his name being on the list.”
“He wasn’t on the list I gave you. He was on my own personal one.”
“You collected him?”
“Personally I did.”
This scared Trev a bit. Joseph typically did not do any work that would dirty his hands any more. He usually had others do it for him. It was what he has been doing for decades. “And you want me to do what with him?”
“You will do what Al asks you to do, and he will tell you what to do in only a short while.”
“Understood,” Trev said, seeing that Joseph wanted him to learn the reason from Al himself. Just how much does he know about what will happen or what the others will do, Trev thought to himself.
“You will leave now,” Joseph said in a flat voice.
Trev took the not so subtle hint. But as he stood up his eyes fell upon the scars on Joseph’s face. They ran from the outside corners of his eyes to the corners of his mouth. He typically hid them with makeup and refused to have nanomeds or a Medidrone fix them. It was not the first time Trev has seen the scars, but it was the first time that Joseph noticed the stare.
“Do you want to know?” Joseph asked, with a hint of wonder in his voice as to what Trev will say.
“No,” Trev said, trying to get out of the conversation that might be potentially lethal.
“I will tell you. Sit,” Joseph replied, pointing to the seat that Trev just stood up from.
Trev sat back down into the chair. He did not want to be in this situation. On the outside he showed nothing but a blank slate. On the inside, however, he tensed with every move that Joseph made.
“You see,” Joseph said and paused. “One time I did screw up. One time I was caught.”
Joseph leaned back into his chair, still holding the glass of water. “Oh, yes. It was the only time their intelligence divi
sion knew about what I was doing beforehand. We were going to take out one of the hydroponics facilities. Send it going straight down and become a beautiful ball of fire.”
Smiling at the thought, Joseph looked past Trev as if he was recalling a memory. “I was on the operation myself. Inside the facility no less. It was my first plan after all. I felt like I couldn’t trust anyone with the last part. So I did it myself. Seemed like I was right.”
Trev watched as Joseph’s eyes hardened and looked right back at him. “Back then I only hated the person who owned that facility. He screwed me on a deal. I lost a lot of money. So I decided to make us even by destroying one of his facilities.
“The person who I had helping me I had known for a very long time. He was a very good friend of mine. It wasn’t his first time doing an industry war. That was probably why he was caught and told them the plan.”
Trev hung on every word, his muscles tight inside and ready to move if needed. “I was in the control room. I had neutralized everyone in there. I was about to set the course when they captured me.”
“They?” Trev couldn’t help asking. He winced a bit after he said it, wishing he would keep himself silent.
“Naval intelligence types. They tortured me. They were the ones to give me the scars you see here,” Joseph said and pointed to his face. “But I had planned for such a thing to happen. I thought myself ridiculous for doing so. I always believed it wouldn’t happen. But I had planned for every event possible. I had my partner freed too. I did worse to him than I did to the agents.”
Joseph leaned back again into his chair, relaxing his posture as he did so. “I ended up doing worse to them than what they did to me. But I keep these scars as a reminder. It was my birth as Joseph. But I wanted more revenge against the Commonwealth for the pain they put me through. Nanomeds can’t take away some of the pain caused by the damage they did. They did that to me on purpose to. So I would have a reminder.”
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