Flee or Kill: The Future Of Reality TV (Future Forward Book 2)
Page 14
"We have 15 seconds until Security overrides this command to reestablish emergency control and give them back monitoring. We can't let them fully box us or we're fokked. We'll break straight out in a battle formation. Double up your targets whenever possible. I want to whittle as many of them down as we can. On my command. Be ready to surprise them. Power back up."
As Security established full emergency contact control and all the servers responded, the Team powered up and full communications were restored.
26/05/2167 11:55:00
"What was that?" demanded the Secretary.
Lieutenant Chambers replied, "Interesting tactic, Sir, we have never had this happen before. The servers have already been adjusted so it can't happen again. Sir," he added.
"What did he say?" said the Secretary.
"Sir, we have no power source within a half mile of the Team, our teams were ordered back too far. Satellites aren't able to record actual physical sounds, the Captain shielded his mouth so we couldn't even get a lip read. And electronic sentries aren't posted outside the city limits. Even our drone cameras were not able to view the Captain's mouth for word recognition interpretation. Once the Captain turned off his voice-feeds, there was absolutely no system in place to gather that sound. We have no idea what he said. Sir," said the Lieutenant.
"We have video," the Secretary stated. "Edit and release it immediately. This will be a good teaser for whatever happens next. Whatever he does, we'll stop, but let's tease the audience with this. Release it."
"Yes, Sir." The Lieutenant spun to leave the office and heard the Secretary start the next conversation.
"Captain Davies. Check the vid feed for what just happened. The Captain is no fool, he knows this game and how it's played. And as you know, he's very good at it. But he's just tossed us a wrinkle and we're not sure what he's about to do. Pass this along to your Team. You'll have to respond quickly and you have my full permission to react without my orders in response to whatever the Captain is planning," he said.
So much for taking the rest of the day off, he thought shaking his head. He stood, turned to the city view behind him and ran a series of what-if questions and scenarios in his mind. Hmm, what if everybody was killed? I'd control all the physical power with no opposition possible. What if everybody on the chase was killed except for a very few of his loyal troops? I'd control all the light-suited Security personnel and the few heavy suits.
I could physically takeover Central Servers and all the infrastructure they controlled but could I control the Corporate computer systems and that damnable satellite laser system? Not yet he decided. The personal biometric control systems wouldn't allow anybody other than Corporate officers to access or use those systems. And they could kill me by overriding my biometric controls. Not yet, not yet, he decided
He turned, put his hands on his desk, leaned over to stare directly into his personal feed on the desk monitor. He idly noted his portfolio value. I wonder if that hacker can break into the stock exchange and alter that as well? He smiled at the thought and stood back up.
The most important thing is to find that hacker. Everything depends on that. Then I'll be able to make some changes around here, he thought.
He smiled as he sat back at his desk and opened his comm channel.
26/05/2167 12:24:00
"Jake, tune into the Chase," said the computer into Jake's ear feed. Jake, who had just finished his morning test, smiled at how easy it had been and flicked his visual feed onto the chase channel.
He leaned back against his student work desk and heard the Captain give the first order, ""All troops, forward, wide diamond-point formation, full battle speed."
Not wanting to take his eyes off the action for a second, he strode to the main tech student lounge, flicked off his personal feed and joined the other students standing, sitting and lying in front of the giant wall screen.
Jake laughed out loud as the other student whooped out loud when the Captain's Team moved forward into a wide v-shape. He heard Kevin's voice somewhere down front yell, "He's not watching his flanks, he's moving at full speed. They'll never catch him."
Jake yelled back, "Doesn't matter, by the time they react, he'll be gone. That group he's running towards is confused. Look at their biometrics, readings are all over the place. Adrenalin spiking means they're confused and might panic."
A series of whoops and the odd rebel yell filled the small lounge.
"First shots, Security Team. Ineffective you stupid fokkers. Haven't you ever heard of ganging up?" yelled Devon from somewhere near the front of the lounge out of Jake's view.
"OK, everybody's paired up but watch out, this is where it gets interesting, " yelled Jake to whoops and more yells. Jake bounced from foot to foot.
"West and Smythe, concentrate your firepower on the same target. Pick the left flank target, join Sergeant Price and go three on one. The Sergeant has already engaged." The Captain's voice came clearly over the speaker as well as directly to Jake's ear feeds. He'd turned them on to hear over the din his friends were making.
An explosion on the screen brought more yells.
Devon messaged Jake, "It only took three seconds to overload that fokkers system. Poor guy died instantly."
Jake messaged back, "Yeah, pretty damn fast when you overload that way. Never seen that before. It's all over but the crying now."
Kevin joined the feed conversation. "Look out, those three are going to join Jaspers and they'll roll up the line."
Jake watched, remembered to breathe and took a deep breath. He watched the chase Team Captain's suit flare. It toppled and fell uncontrolled, bounced off a large rock and wound up wedged between two boulders. He heard Captain Turner cursing the corporation, security and the Chairman before his audio feed suddenly stopped. Jake watched the Captain's biometrics weaken for the next thirty seconds before they flatlined.
The students were quiet.
Devon said, "This is a slaughter, not a battle."
Jim said, "Once those extra weapons were available, the fight was as good as over. Fok that was quick."
"There's no damage to any of the Captain's men," said Jake. He added, "Listen."
The room's audio systems echoed with a few, very brief victory shouts from the Captain's Team. Then they stopped.
The Captain's voice echoed in the now silent room. "We've no reason to celebrate. Those were our friends. And there are now families without fathers. Wives without husbands."
"Fok!" The speakers echoed with Jaspers' voice.
"Now we run," said the Captain. "Point, flanks, rear, establish and move it. Now."
The room remained silent and the students slowly stood and left the room without making eye contact with each other.
Jake looked at the screen with the running men and their probable path highlighted. Jake stood watching the runners. You've just won a battle but you can bet you won't win too many more. The Secretary is likely severely annoyed and will deliver some serious pain, he thought to himself.
26/05/2167 12:32:00
Sergeant Price moved up through the ranks to run beside the Captain. Making eye contact for a second before returning to watch where he was running, he opened the private command channel.
"Mind if I ask how you knew which direction to attack?" he asked.
"Didn't matter," said the Captain. "Think about it for a second. They have 30 men and four sides to cover. That's 7.5 men per side. The only way we could have lost is if the Secretary put eleven men in our path. That would leave the other directions really undermanned and as soon as I'd seen that, I'd have pulled us back and turned to face one of the other sides. It wouldn't have mattered which because they'd all be less than ours. As it was, we got lucky and hit the group that was already short of men."
"They'll switch tactics on us then," said Price.
"Oh, you can bet on that anyway. The ratings will demand it," said Fraser.
"You thought this through beforehand didn't you?" said Price.
> "That's why they pay me the big bucks," said Fraser.
"Well, keep thinking then my Captain, keep thinking," said Price. "Dropping back now, Sir,"
The Sergeant dropped back to take his regular spot at the tail end of the column.
The men ran.
26/05/2167 12:32:12
At that same time, the Secretary received a call from a very irate Chairman, "Carpenter, I assume you saw that, but what I want to know is what you're doing about it."
Carpenter swung his chair around to face the Corporate building.
"Sir, the planning group has scenarios running to adjust our plans. We still have them outnumbered twenty-four to nine so there shouldn't be a problem. We also have our satellite systems if we need them. But I rather doubt you want me to wipe them out now and lose program time. The problem is if we split our troops into any sized group under nine, we will lose direct fights. We can't trail, flank and contain with impunity. We can do two of the four and win. As I said, we're evaluating scenarios," said the Secretary.
"And Sir, you may recall you wanted data on what happens if we lose a man. Sir, we've just lost more than that and that data should be available from your people shortly.
Finally and quite frankly, you've just seen why the Captain is the best we have. He surprised us all and unfortunately, that included me, the chase teams and my tech people but it won't happen again. We've reprogrammed the system to give us full control of all suit functions so the Captain can't shut down even if he wants to."
"Send more heavy suits to back them up," replied Gwinnett.
Carpenter smiled with the thought he was about to plunge in the verbal knife. It was simply too good an opportunity to miss.
"That's impossible Mr. Chairman, there are no more suits. Corporate decided we didn't need more than forty so that's what was budgeted for. You may recall I suggested otherwise, but that's what you decided and paid for."
"Carpenter, are you suggesting you can't get the job done with the resources you were given?"
Carpenter shook his head. "No, Sir. I merely point out the facts. We have no more suits, it was your budget decision and now I'm working to solve that problem." Take that you smug bastard, he thought. He didn't make the obscene gesture he was thinking about; he didn't know whether the Chairman had him onscreen or not.
"The Captain was creatively lucky this time but not the next time," the Secretary finished.
He finished this reply to a dead system, Gwinnett had cut him off. Fok, that felt good. Toss that problem right back at him.
The Secretary stood to look off to his left in his office windows and to see, for the ten-thousandth time, the Corporate tower in the centre of the city. It's gleaming chrome and steel construction, complete with reflective windows dominated every view as the architect had intended. He smiled at the thought it could be his new office.
But that was his long term plan while his short term one meant he had to prolong this chase until he had his hacker.
The Secretary decided the loss of a few troopers wasn't a problem, everything would work itself out just fine, just fine, in the end. He could still ask Corporate for satellite laser control if things got worse. His own future was excellent once the small details were worked through and Chairman Gwinnett's future was also crystal clear. It would however, not be such a happy one he decided.
26/05/2167 14:00:00
<6t94whp> :"I'm not hearing or seeing anything of him. Our decision is whether to step in to help the Captain or whether we allow the Chase to reach its inevitable conclusion. This may not be the time we've hoped and waited for. The newbie assigned a task to Central Servers that is consuming a huge amount of server capacity. Between the chase vids, Security demands, and his project, city server capacity is almost maxed out."
<6t94whp> :"Now you know as much as I do. I'll give the young man credit, whatever he's doing, he's doing it well and securely this time. Even Security or Corporate Tech can't see the demand spike. Don't ask how I know this but..."
<6t94whp> :"Interesting thought. I'll check it out."
<6t94whp> :"Agreed."
The rest did the same.
26/05/2167 14:10:00
"Mr. Secretary, may I report?" said newly created Lieutenant Chambers. "I believe I have something that will interest you."
"Come." The Secretary was intrigued to see what the young man would say and how accurately he would understand what he was looking for and accomplish with this search. He was, after all, so very young.
Chambers flipped his hand at the door and it opened silently.
A half minute later, Chambers hesitated at the open door and entered only at a nod from Carpenter. He walked across and came to attention in front of the desk. Gave a quick salute, and having received a nod in return, began to speak. "Sir, I took a good look at the search you mentioned and have been thinking about it. I want your approval to change it, Sir." He paused but continued after another small nod.
"The old search looked for existing data because of our target's behavior. But, if the individual is good at computer evasion, he'll get around any kind of normal search no matter how extensively we run it. I want to search for what isn't there."
He rushed forward, knowing he only had one chance at this explanation and he had to keep it simple; the Secretary was not known for either his tech knowledge or his patience in absorbing it. "Sir, if this person is hidden, he has to be leaving a data hole somewhere, something that's either too normal, too repetitive or too much identical data. He has to leave a pattern of system avoidance. We search for what isn't there but should be."
"Explain what 'Search for what isn't there but should be?' means," said Carpenter.
"Sir, most people believe they can do more than one task at a time. They believe in multitasking but we know, from our tests they can't focus on more than one task at at time. This means when they're focussed on each other or on a task that's not approved, they have a reduced data demand on the other task. And yes, Sir, this will happen all the time," replied Chambers.
"What we can do, however, is run searches to find single events matching up where two or more people draw reduced inputs at exactly the same time. And we start the search around the Chase events. Sir, we also focus on the people with the training to be able to to this, and not in the general population. In this way, we reduce our search terms, time frames, targets and events to something manageable. If that doesn't work, we move outward from those events minute by minute until we spot a pattern.
It is the patterns that will trip up our target, Sir. And those we can investigate much further," said Chambers.
"How long will this take?" asked the Secretary suddenly realizing how this kind of pattern search might help him solve several other problems. This young man would clearly be an asset in his planning.
"Sir, I slept down in the barracks last night instead of at home. I'm at my desk, when I'm awake. This is like searching for a molecule in a city. I know you want a definite time but that's up to the servers. However, it will be faster if we focus on specific patterns in smaller target groups than the previous wide open search," said Chambers.
The Secretary thought for a moment and smiled, "Carry on Lieutenant. Good thinking."
Chambers saluted, turned and strode out of the office. As he returned to his office, he wondered if any of his people were monitoring his bio-si
gns. Probably. He grimaced. They'd know it had been a good meeting for him because of the rise in endorphins and relaxation signals from every one of his body sphincters.
26/05/2167 15:00:00
Jake received several notes from friends suggesting he join them for a beer and babe watching. He was tempted to go, to get out of this compartment away from his computer system, his problems and just get some damned fresh air. But the memories of Mallory were just too fresh; he really didn't feel well enough or safe enough to go out.
"Go," said the computer voice in his ear. "You need the exercise, the fresh air and some human contact. Your hormone levels are screwed up, you need a diversion." The command voice did not tell him of the new search and how it was extremely busy fixing the vast amount of data for the more established voices. Jake should still be safe if he was careful.
"You're worse than a mother," Jake subvocalized back. But he went.
26/05/2167 15:00:00
Secretary Carpenter stood behind his desk and stretched to ease his back while he watched the program data scroll across his main wall screen. I've been sitting down for too long he decided. I need some serious exercise.
The main screen showed audience levels dropping below optimum levels. The intersecting graph lines clearly indicated he needed some action to bring viewers back online. He smiled, pleased the interest had maintained itself for this length of time without having to do further programming. At this rate, he could prolong the chase for another week or even more. I'll get the hackers yet, he thought
The screens beside the main one showed an overhead satellite view and graphically marked three armed groups moving in unison across the countryside. He'd consolidated his three teams into two after the debacle of losing 6 men.