Information Cloud: Science fiction and fantasy series (Tales of Cinnamon City Book 1)

by Peter James West

  Drop Rangers

  Riser pushed hot pizza into the corner of his mouth. He chewed through synthetic pork and imitation pineapple and something quite nasty. What was that? Stuffing two fingers into his mouth, he pulled out a black olive. Nasty! They should use that shit in chemical weapons. He scowled at the olive, holding it between his thick thumb and forefinger, and then threw it over his shoulder. He heard it landing among the previous day's discarded food cartons.

  Chewing his pizza, Riser tried to keep a grip on his excitement. He turned his attention to the three new shiny consoles that sat upright on the desk in front of him - another of his very reasonable demands. They sat nicely arranged in a semicircle so he could see them all without turning his chair. Thin and sleek, they looked far more expensive than the usual shit equipment Neech had given him over the years. It wasn't until now that he realised just how bad his old equipment had been.

  Each console displayed different facets of the extensive Mekinet news gathering system. There were multitudes of drone selection options, scrolling status readings, and visual logs showing various hangars and secure buildings across Cinnamon City and beyond.

  A thin transparent grid covered the desk in front of the consoles, flat touch keys just visible above the polished dark wood surface. These were the manual control systems for the net-feed droids. There were other control systems too, ones that didn't require his hands at all.

  Riser pulled his chair closer to the consoles, squinting at row upon row of orange and red symbols. The little moving shapes and blinking status lights shifted into occasionally identifiable forms, but they dispersed again before he could work out what any of them meant. The left console showed an overhead view of the Mekinet News hangar in south Shinara. Inside the hangar, four Drop Rangers hung from a high ceiling. Four of the bastards!

  Riser tried to remain calm but he kept having the overwhelming urge to insult everyone that he had ever met with his new-found status. Not yet, he cautioned himself. Not with all these droids to play with. He scratched his ear with one chubby finger, blinking slowly as he watched the numbers flashing on the bottom of the console. Each Drop Ranger contained two hundred and fifty droids. Riser nodded to himself, moving his fingers across the controls to entice the first Ranger into action. A few more taps and a red light throbbed with urgency.

  ACTIVATED

  Riser scrunched up his short nose in appreciation. 'Come on then,' he said, 'let's see what you can do.'

  Neech had said not to send more than fifty droids at once, but fuck him. The slimy little bastard was about to get a lesson in the absence of subtlety. Riser knew how to run a news network, even if Neech didn't, and now he finally had the power to do it. Slapping the confirm key, he sat back with contentment, waiting for his foul deed to come to fruition.

  The Kamari

  The sun was still well below the horizon but already orange light was beginning to creep across the soft ploughed fields ahead. The fields continued for a hundred metres before giving way to steep banks that led to the deep flowing waters of Wyser River. The river was wide, easily visible from Nick's position. He sat in K1's cockpit, watching patterns play across the water's surface as he thought about the enemy that wouldn't go away.

  In recent months, when the Security Forces had attacked the Kamari head-on, their enemy had slipped away, quickly moving their soldiers beyond reach. Too often, they had escaped easily and without explanation. Questions had been asked about whether they had received help from the inside. Nobody liked to talk about that.

  Nick wondered if any of the people he knew were helping the Kamari? How would he know? How could he find out? He tapped two fingers on the Perspex above his head and hoped that God was on his side today.

  Every day there were more rumours about the Kamari numbers growing. It was difficult to understand why so many people would join them. It wasn't just fanatics and malcontents. It was tax-paying citizens of Cinnamon City, both young and old. They worked their day jobs and then gathered quietly with Kamari agents to support their cause at night. It didn't make any sense. There was something rotten in the core of Cinnamon City, and Central Command seemed powerless, or unable to cut it out. They didn't even know where to start.

  The Security Forces had been forced to defend themselves more often than they had been able to attack. Things were changing for the worse. And now this - a new Kamari stronghold that was so close to Beacon Station - only a few kilometres away. How could it have gone unnoticed for so long? Why hadn't the flying drones detected it? Beacon Station sent out drones every day. All the stations did. It gave Nick a bad feeling in the pit of his stomach to think that the Kamari could be hiding so close.

  He tried to compose his thoughts as he raised his hand to tap at the console in front of him. Patching a secure channel through to K2 and K3, he merged them together to set up a group call. Nick filled the others in about Gail Thompson's orders, and then waited for the expected groans of dismay.

  'The Kamari?' Edwards said, his voice still sounding scratchy behind layers of interference.

  'I know it's not what you wanted to hear,' Nick said. 'Central Command thinks the Kamari have taken over the old Havers Compound. They might even be using it as their new HQ.'

  'Wouldn't we have noticed that?'

  'We did, Edwards. That's why we're here.' Nick tried his best to remain patient. It was really difficult talking to Edwards Sometimes. He was an idiot, and he didn't even try to hide the fact.

  Edwards didn't know it yet, but this was going to be his last combat operation as part of Nick's unit. From next week, Nick had arranged for him to be transferred to a law and order unit on the outskirts of Cinnamon City. It was a heavy demotion with less pay. Edwards would hate it, but he would be less of a liability to those around him.

  Some people just weren't cut out for combat duty. Edwards hadn't really gelled with the other crew members. He was sociable enough, but he complained a lot, and he was often the cause of arguments at Beacon Station. He had a way of winding people up, without even trying, causing unwanted tensions back at the station when the crew really needed to unwind between patrols. There was no other option. He had to go.

  'Are they expecting us?' Rachel said through the overhead comms unit.

  'Not as far as I can tell,' Nick said. 'We have a blackout on all communications.'

  'Right,' Edwards said in a sarcastic tone.

  Nick gazed up at the sky. It wasn't as dark as it had been a few minutes ago. The sun was just beginning to peek above the horizon. 'Yes, I know,' he said. 'That doesn't mean much these days.'

  'The last blackout we had, ended up being broadcast live on some low budget net feed,' Edwards said. He sounded resigned to the same thing happening again.

  'Thompson said we should assume the Kamari have no idea we're coming. I don't agree with that. Maintain encrypted channels at all times. We'll move in fast and try to pin them down before they can do anything about it.'

  'I'm assuming they already know we're coming,' Edwards said.

  Nick grimaced. He wished he could believe otherwise, but he had to admit that Edwards was probably right on this occasion.

  Rachel made a strange sound in the back of her throat but she made no further comment.

  'Okay, let's move out,' Nick said. 'You have the new coordinates now. Let's keep it tight. We can't afford any more fuck ups.'

  The Crocs

  Crocs had never been described as graceful, but nobody complained about having to be inside one either. Nick rode in the command module, staring through the dome-shaped Perspex cockpit into the near-darkness outside. Sure, he received a decent jolt to his backside every time one of the Croc's feet plunged into the muddy ground outside, but it had a kind of reassuring rhythm to it. Nick had suffered worse in his time. There was a running joke that the Crocs held their bodies so close to the ground so the crew wouldn't have so far to fall. Nick had never understood that joke. He sat in the cockpit with warm air swirling around his feet while
the sounds of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata played in the background, accompanying the Croc's lumbering progress.

  The Crocs needed no actual controlling other than to be given a set of coordinates and a priority rating. Nick had time to take in the scenery - for what it was worth. He had set the Croc's current navigation priority rating to green, which meant head towards the given coordinates, taking evasive action to navigate around any large obstacles in its path. A priority of purple would cause the Croc to sprint on a direct line towards the given coordinates, leaving a trail of destruction that no station would ever want to pay for. Nick's original instructor had suggested that he use the purple priority as little as possible. It had seemed like a fine idea at the time, and nothing had happened in the last eight years to persuade him otherwise.

  'Havers Compound up ahead, Commander,' Rachel said.

  Her voice was professional as always but Nick still had to quiet his wandering thoughts. He tapped a series of commands into his console, taking control of all three Crocs at once. His commands overrode any instructions that the others might have entered into their own control systems.

  The three ungainly machines came to a gradual halt at the top of the riverbank, bowing their heads like giant insects investigating the remains of some decomposing animal. They bent their jointed legs, adjusted their shield generators, and lowered their segmented bodies close to the ground.

  'Why do you do that,' Edwards said. 'Why don't you give us the orders and let us carry them out ourselves?' He sounded annoyed, petulant even.

  'Get over it,' Nick didn't bother to explain military protocol that Edwards should already have known. The commanding officer was entitled to coordinate all units under his control if he thought that offensive operations were about to begin. Nick hadn't formally stated that this was his belief, but he didn't see the need to apologise for it either. He waited for Rachel to join in with the complaints, but when the silence stretched out, he realised that she wasn't going to.

  'What now?' Edwards said.

  'We scan,' Nick said. 'Full sweep, five globes each. Now.' He tapped his control panel, initiating a scan.

  'Shit! Give us some fucking notice, will you,' Edwards said, his voice continuing to hiss and click, but not as bad as before.

  'Get that fucking comms pack changed. Now!'

  'All right! All right! I'm programming the globes, give me a bloody chance.'

  'Cool it guys,' Rachel said in a calm voice. 'We have a job to do here.'

  Nick bit back a response, and for once, Edwards shut up as well. It had been a tough few weeks for all of them. Tempers were beginning to fray.

  A distant chorus of console tapping told Nick that they were all doing their jobs. His console confirmed that they were both launching their own scan globes.

  At the bottom of his console, he noticed a strange command sequence. It was a series of symbols that he hadn't seen for a long time. He couldn't remember what it meant.

  Releasing the restraining straps on his bucket seat, he leant forwards, rummaging around with his hand beneath the seat. He was hoping to find a copy of the RS6 handbook. He hadn't used it at all since his arrival at Beacon Station, and he suspected half of the pages might be missing even if he could find it. Hopefully no one had thrown it out.

  After fumbling around, trying to find it for a couple of minutes, he accepted the fact that someone probably had thrown it out. It was embarrassing, but he needed to know what the strange command sequence meant, so he forwarded it to Central Command, asking if they could help. The Tech centre said they would look into it, and that it would take them some time to find the relevant decoding set. Nick thought it sounded like they had lost their handbook too, but he let it go. He wasn't in any position to take the piss.

  Birthday Girl

  Ario Neech sat in his expansive open-plan office on the seventy-first level of the Mekinet News building. His slight frame perched on a padded black chair with a high back that wasn't much wider than his narrow shoulders. He believed in professionalism in action and appearance at all times, and he wore nothing but the most expensive suits, made from Cinnamon City's finest cloth. He required the same smart, clinical lines from his surroundings.

  A short low table stood on one side of the room, and two guest chairs had been placed against the far wall, well away from his desk. There were no windows in his office. Ario had insisted that there weren't any. As a news broadcaster, he believed that he should receive all the information that he needed directly from his own news feeds. If anything was happening outside the four walls of his office and wasn't being reported on one of the Mekinet News feeds, somebody somewhere wasn't doing their job.

  Ario lifted his round-rimmed spectacles from his knee and put them on. Rising to his feet, he walked towards the three large tables that formed an island in the centre of his office. Each table housed a dozen small consoles, all angled upwards so that Ario could read the news feeds while standing. He had long since noticed that his most productive thoughts always occurred to him while standing up.

  The consoles showed all the live data feeds, showing events from all across the Orange Zone. Ario found it useful to be able to see all the feeds in one place. It made it easier for him to maintain a consistent tone across all the Mekinet News coverage, and it allowed him to remain true to his core goal - to provide honest information, direct to the people at a reasonable cost. He didn't believe in censorship or embellishing the truth with smart angles or political biases. The truth should stand on its own, telling its own story. He felt proud to uphold his principals. It had been twenty years since Ario had founded Mekinet News, and every day he had learnt something new. That was why he loved the news business, even if there were many in the city that didn't love the way he ran his business.

  A yellow light started flashing on the nearest console. Ario leant forwards to see what it was. With a tap of his finger, he accepted the incoming comms link.

  'Ario Neech, Mekinet News,' he said.

  'Mr Neech, this is Paul Raster, from Net3. I've been thinking about your offer.'

  Ario smiled. 'I thought you might find it interesting.'

  'I've been over it with some of our producers, and we think that it has definite possibilities. We need to check the fine print, but if it all checks out, I'd like to take you up on your offer.'

  'This is the truth the people need to hear,' Ario said.

  'When will you be able to provide the live feeds?'

  'Soon, very soon. My droids are on their way now.'

  'Where did you say the base was?'

  Ario laughed, 'I didn't.'

  'Ah very well. You can't blame me for trying.'

  'The feeds should start soon. If we are agreed on the terms I sent through, I can route them to Net3 with a one minute delay as soon as you are ready.'

  'A one minute delay seems awfully long. Such news needs to be available as soon as possible. Its value is in its timeliness.'

  'Mekinet News will be broadcasting live.'

  'Mekinet News, yes, but what about Net3? A small delay is understandable, since you are providing the feeds, but wouldn't thirty seconds be enough?'

  Ario tapped one finger against his leg as he considered Raster's request. Net3 had been a good source of secondary revenue this year. If he gave them a good deal this time, they would soon be back for more. With over twenty news networks in the city, reselling feeds could be as lucrative as broadcasting them himself.

  'Thirty seconds is fair,' Ario said. 'I can do that.'

  'Then you have a deal. I'll have the contracts signed and transmitted within the hour.'

  'The feeds will be set up as soon as they come through.'

  'Have you thought about how Central Command is going to react to this?'

  'Don't worry about Central Command. I'll handle them myself.'

  'Won't you have a conflict of interest on this one?'

  'No.'

  'Well, I'll leave that for you to sort out. I just hope those feeds live u
p to all your promises. It's a lot of credits that you're asking for.'

  'Once the feeds are on, you'll have everything you need.'

  Ario closed the comms link and walked across to the middle table. Riser Trent's feeds were still blank. He had better not mess this up. There were a lot of credits riding on this story. Ario hoped he could trust Trent but his service record was patchy at best.

  A soft buzz at the door interrupted Ario's thoughts.

  'Yes, who is it?'

  The door opened a fraction, and a head popped through, 'You have a special visitor,' Mrs Rimmer said. His secretary's expression revealed nothing.

  'Well? Who is it?'

  He could hear voices in the corridor outside. Mrs Rimmer's head disappeared for a moment and then she returned with a frown, 'Lady Lisa Henson is here to see you.'

  Ario wondered what she was talking about. 'Lady what?'

  The door flew open and his granddaughter came running into the room in fits of laughter. 'Grandpa! Grandpa!'

  Ario reached down, plucking Lisa from the floor as she ran into his arms. At five years old, she was barely tall enough to reach his waist, but she was already getting too heavy to lift up. Using all the strength in his small frame, Ario lifted her high in the air and held her in his arms for a long, warm hug. Lisa returned his hugs in abundance.

  'I... can't... breathe...' Ario said.

  Lisa laughed and loosened her grip around his neck, but she didn't let go. She looked up at him with big brown eyes that shone from a face that was bursting with enthusiasm. Her arms and legs were thinner than sticks. Ario didn't know how she could weigh so much and yet look so thin. She had heavy bones, perhaps, that was what Rachel often said.