by Ben Onslow
In the Vid, me and Jeron make it to the roof without meeting any resistance.
Didn’t see any people actually.
Maybe they took off after the explosion.
Maybe they heard us coming and stayed out of our way.
Maybe no one uses the stairs.
Maybe they had been evacuated because this is just a training exercise.
We choose a spot near the parapet on the top of a raised area, had a clear view of the city to the East.
We set up the lasers. Extend the tripod legs, line the guns up like the arrows on a clock, hands showing ten to two. We take off our backpacks, sit them near the laser, then our coats, fold them and put them behind the stocks, the lay face down, feet almost touching, elbows resting on the padding of the coats. I remember there was still that smell and that noise.
I see Jeron push up his visors so he can see, then look over at me.
I push mine up too.
The light from the city reflects the sun back at me, it bounces of the tiles and glass of the buildings.
A SkyVid starts up, a couple of Humicrib babies bumble across the sky. The words ‘Humicrib, the cradle of the world’ follow then.
Through the sights we scan our segment, 180 degrees, 90 degrees each, scan for suspicious movement, any movement, but the place is dead except for the perimeter moving relentlessly wider and wider like a ripple. Can’t see Levi and the others, they must be under the buildings searching. The streets are empty, just the trains flashing past every few minutes. I can just spot Sharpe and Hood on the opposite side of the hospital site settled now like us.
I see Jeron focus on the shattered building.
“Who do you think did it?” he asks, still staring through the scope, pushing through that insistent noise everywhere.
“Radical insurgents, extremists, militants, nuts, enemies of the human race,” I say on Vid and you can just hear it in my voice, I’m making fun of what we get told because by then I’m convinced this is just a training exercise.
Leach waves again, and the bloody Vid pauses again.
“And that was?” he asks.
“Sir, light relief in a tense situation, sir,” I say and get a snigger.
“There were dead people in there,” he says, nods at the shattered hospital building paused on the wall.
“Yes sir,” I say. And there were bodies lying in the carpark and on the street. People just walking to their ESDs or the train station and boom, they’re gone. And if I let myself believe this is real, it has to be Locals doing it doesn’t it? Locals just randomly killing civilians for no good reason.
Who else would? It’s not the Elite’s genes getting harvested. And so today when I searched though the crosshairs I prayed I wouldn’t see any suspicious movement.
Prayed I’d never have to do this job I’d been trained for.
And never have to do what Jacob’s ordered me to do, whatever needs to be done to stay in Vector.
Never step out of line.
Never show what I feel.
Never disobey an order.
Never stand out.
Watch, listen.
Report back to him.
That’s Jacob’s orders.
So I pray this is just a training exercise.
Because Jacob said never to hold back if I’m ordered to kill.
So if it’s Locals doing this then it’s Locals I’m meant to kill.
And I’m not sure if all this is worth killing for.
Leach lets that pass because he probably knows as well as I do I committed a bigger crime a few minutes later than just making fun of the indoctrination.
The Vid starts again.
“Got anything?” asks the Jeron on the wall in front of us.
“Nah, nothing happening here,” I see myself say, and then go back to sweeping the area.
I watch myself watching beyond the crosshairs and praying I don’t see anyone where they’re not meant to be.
And praying if I see someone it won’t be someone I know.
Then there’s something at the edge of the crosshair.
“Over there,” I say to Jeron.
He swings his laser around, matches his coordinates with mine.
All the time I’m praying it won’t be someone I went to school with, or whose father drinks in the pub, or I’ve met at the party.
“A kid,” Jeron confirms.
And we watch this little kid run out onto the road chasing a ball. I remember the drone in my ears got louder and louder and more insistent.
The mother in a blue cloak races over to him scoops him up, then stands there holding him looking up at us, eyes frightened, then she ducks back where ever she came from.
Thank God, I remember thinking.
I watch myself close my eyes and rest my forehead against the stock.
Fuck.
The Vid stops again.
“What happened there, Fraser?” asks Leach. “More light relief?”
“No Sir, the sun in my eyes.” I say, remembering what happened next.
“You all right, Jack?” asks the Jeron in the Vid on cue.
‘Yeah,” I say, “just resting my eyes, got a bit of glare.”
“Use the googles,” says Jeron and twists to reach his backpack, gets them out and hands them over.
“Strike one,” says Leach. “Sun in your eyes or not, you shoot first, ask questions later.”
I can live with that, strike.
We watch ourselves lie there, then Leach fast forwards, flicks through twenty minutes more of that, we saw nothing else, the noise was still suffocating around us.
I see the Com on my wrist light up.
A recall.
“Time to go?” asks Jeron.
“Yeah,” I hear myself say and see myself stand up and the Vid flicks to Sharpe and Hood.
Leach goes through the whole mission for each part of the unit, just like that, point by point and really even with the bodies lying around and the damage to the hospital building, this had to be just a training exercise, set up to test for weaknesses, because each team had predictable things they did wrong and did right. It would make you wonder if some things had been planted to just test us.
I’ve been for the run, had a shower, changed into the base fatigues. I go to the Rec Room to find the others.
They’re all standing around the pool table, there’s an ImageMaker on it and beside the ImageMaker a naked girl is dancing. I know she has to be a Hologram, pretty hard to smuggle a whole girl onto the base.
As I walk in through the door, Jeron says to Levi, “Fuck, turn her off or you’ll get us all a spell in The Room.”
“You’ve got a dirty mind, man,” Dante says to Levi.
Levi grins, he’s already on two strikes for breaking the Respect and Protect Code so if he gets caught with that Vid he’s a certainty for a spell at Re-Education, the rest of us its less certain, we don’t run quite as close to the line as he does.
He steps over to the ImageMaker on the table, goes to turn the thing off and he’s just about to touch the screen and bloody Leach walks through the door.
Levi moves quick and the image fades but Leach has seen it.
“Attention!”
We’re all suddenly ramrod straight, looking at the walls.
“Whose is it?” Leach asks.
I see Levi start to sweat.
If Levi owns up he gets the third strike.
And he doesn’t deserve that just for liking a bit of fun sometimes.
I’m on one strike, and only because not shooting at that kid and mum did me no good at all. I should have shot them to keep Leach off my back, because this had to be a training exercise, they had to be images, what mother would let a kid out on the street with a thousand odd VTroops armed with lasers searching the place? And that noise around us all the time, that noise that set your teeth on edge, where was that coming from? And why would the two girls be in the foyer still when the rest of the building has been evacuated?
But I haven’t violated the ‘Respect and Protect’ part of the code ever, so I think I still have a buffer and Leach might go easy on me being a first offence.
So I step forward.
“Mine, Sir,” I say.
I just pray Jacob’s right.
That this is nearly over and I can go home soon.
And that if I do as Jacob says, someday he’ll let me see Ela again.
Leach looks at me, all steel and irritation.
Then turns on Levi, “Delete it,” he orders. “My office now, Fraser,” he says and strides back out the door.
As I go past Levi says, “Thanks, Jack.”
“You owe me,” I say.
“Yeah, big time,” says Levi.
I follow Leach to the office. He leaves me standing at attention on the bit of carpet between his door and his desk for a good fifteen minutes. Makes you wonder if this mat is some sort of message we’re meant to get without him having to bother telling us he’s pissed off. Leach, is young, not much older than we are, maybe mid-twenties, built and fit, dark hair, silver eyes, like steel when you don’t perform, charcoal if you look like you might argue, doesn’t waste words but really pushes following orders without question, staying in line. Not too different to Jacob except for the talking thing, and not too hard to do after Jacob got me used to obeying orders. But Leach tells you when you get it right too, slaps you on the shoulder, can even say ‘well done’ occasionally.
He sorts through stuff on his Tablet while I’m standing there, then links the Tablet with the display screens on his wall and his desk.
I watch him flick through NavMap after NavMap then he flicks to the feed from a DroneCam, then back to maps, then the Cam like he’s matching them.
Finally, he looks at me, the silver eyes not pleased.
“Strike two,” he says, like he keeps the inventory in his head.
I blink a bit, it’s a first offence, seems a bit steep.
“Sir?”
“For the lie,” he says. “Not for the Image, I don’t believe you brought it in, you’re not that big an idiot, but a big enough idiot to lie to me.”
I don’t say anything.
“No response?” he asks.
“No Sir,” I say, what response is there to that?
He goes back to shuffling through the NavMaps then moves the Tablet to the side of his desk and stands up, still examining the DeskScreen and DroneFeed.
“At least this way,” he mutters, “I don’t lose a man for two days and then have to wait a week before he’s any use again.”
He looks up at me.
“And from now on you keep your head down and your mouth shut, I don’t need to lose you for that much time either,” he says.
“Yes Sir,” I say. He doesn’t need to worry, two bloody strikes in one day, I’ll be so low profile for the next month until they time out he’ll barely see me, there’s no way I want to risk spending a couple of days sitting in a room filled with images like one on the pool table, with me so pumped full of Abhor I’ll never look at a female again.
Levi really does owe me big time.
The idiot.
Leach comes around the desk.
Stands there staring at me a while, then turns back to the desk.
“Moving on,” he says and nods at me to come over to the desk so I can see the Screen properly. “I was coming to find you any way, we’ve got Intel on something happening in a couple of hours.”
Then he flicks to some footage, four hooded figures entering the car park.
“That’s our target,” he says pointing at the hooded figures as he reruns it. “Tonight we find them and destroy them before they do any more damage. They’ve been operating for three months now, targeting strategic buildings. It’s our job to get them, break through the perimeter and hunt them. I want you to lead the ground search.” We’re back to normal, examining the street maps, discussing tactics.
It sure beats Jacob’s way of handling stuff.
