“Captain, do you want us to stay where we are or is there someplace more secure we can wait?” asked Arron.
He and the others at the checkpoint waited for over a minute but heard nothing but static over the comm link.
“Captain! Are you there?’” asked Ward using his Exoskeleton’s more powerful comms to try to reach Captain Pointer but there was still no reply.
“Pick him up and put him in the back of the APC. Something is not right. We’ve lost connection to the captain,” said Knox, looking at everyone around him. “I am making the decisions now. We’re pulling out to a more defensible spot. We’re too exposed here.”
Arron helped two of the other officers not in exoskeleton suits pick up the old man. They had both his hands and legs mag-cuffed behind his back so that there was no way for him to escape. With the door slammed shut there was now less of a chance for the target to get injured.
“Arron, take your hover-cycle and scout ahead for us just to make sure the coast is clear. This is where I want to go,” said Knox using his armored exoskeleton hands to swipe the directions over to Arron.
“Sure,” said Arron. He was happy to help and only took a few seconds to look over the route he needed to take. With his hover-cycle’s small size and speed compared to the APC, he was perfect for scouting ahead of the group.
When the regular officers had loaded up into the APC and the exoskeleton officers had hopped onto the sides, Arron took off down the street widening the distance between them just enough to give those behind him warning if someone was laying an ambush ahead of them.
With his siren turned off so that he was harder to notice, he weaved through the little traffic that was present on the road now that all the side streets were still being blocked off all along their path.
Trailing behind him were the APCs, despite what Knox had thought there were no ambushes or inconveniences on their way to the local Sector 1 police station.
When Arron was nearing a thick red para-steel guard post at the end of the street corner a long para-steel beam fell down blocking his path.
Ping!
“Unidentified person on the hover-cycle, stop where you are! This is a restricted area. Only police and authorized personnel are allowed to come any closer! Identify yourself or we will activate the defense system!”
A holo-call appeared on Arron’s helmet visor as well as each of the M1 officers following behind him.
“We are part of the raiding force that you may have seen on the news. We have come here to request that you allow us to wait here for the Office of Reason who will be coming to pick up a target.”
“Wait, you’re the M1 party that just captured the old man?”
“What if we are?” asked Ward as he hopped off the side of the APC and stared at the guard post.
“We were just about to send out one of our hover-copters to pick up that target! We were given orders by the Office of Reason to escort him to the 4th level.”
“Why you?” asked Knox. “I thought they would send field agents for someone this important.”
“You know why. It’s the same reason they sent you out to capture the target instead of doing it themselves,” said the police officer.
Arron could only nod his head at this. With all he had gone through while under the control of the Office of Reason, he knew they hated taking credit for anything that would bring them hatred from the citizens. Whenever they could they would outsource such jobs unless they wanted to make a statement, then they would go in full force guns blazing with the news covering every second of it.
The officer swiped over the official orders to Knox who looked over them.
“Everything looks to be in order but just to be sure, see if you can contact the captain,” said Knox as he looked over to Arron.
“Captain Pointer, come in! We have received new orders from the Office of Reason. Please reply with a confirmation that you are aware of this.”
No matter what M1 official channel Arron tried there was no response. Even a simple holo-call kept giving him a busy signal before hanging up…
Arron shook his head to Knox after several minutes of nothing but static.
“We can’t just hand him over to you and leave. We have to personally see you place him on the hover-copter and see it take off so that we aren’t accused of something crazy by the Office of Reason later,” said Ward.
The police guard stepped out of the guard post and shrugged as he pressed the holographic button for the parasteel beam to be raised allowing them to enter the secure police area.
“Fine by me, the hover-copter is already up and running. We are all ready to go since we were preparing to go out and look for you. You saved us time coming here.”
As they moved farther in Arron could hear the sound of a hover-copter that was idling, after they passed through another security checkpoint they arrived at the large hover-pad that had two older generation hover-copters resting on it. One of them was letting out a low murmur as it idled. Their pilots were already going through a checklist to make sure the old hover-copter was not going to fail while they were flying.
The side doors of the Hover-copter slammed open and four police officers wielding rifles hopped out.
“What a nice escorting force for the VIP,” said one of the police officers as he walked up to Arron who was getting off his hover-cycle.
“You can never be too careful,” said Arron.
“Right you are,” said the police officer.
With the soft armored M1 officer and exoskeletons forming a shield around the rear of the APC, Knox opened the armored doors and dragged out the old man. As one they all marched over to the hover-copter making sure that the old man was shielded from any possible surprise attack as they handed him over to the four police officers.
Arron watched as they took off M1’s mag-cuffs and gave them back after replacing them with their own mag-cuffs.
The four police officers hauled the old man into the hover-copter like a sack of potatoes and then gave Arron and the other M1 officers a friendly salute before slamming the door shut.
With the target secured, the hover-copter took off and flew out of everyone’s view.
“Well, that settles that. There are still several targets we need to capture. Arron, since you were separated from your team you can join us. With how hectic everything is, the more people we have the easier it will be to capture them,” said Knox.
“Sure, I have no problem helping out,” said Arron.
“We still need to contact the captain so someone needs to keep trying until we get through. When you do inform him of the successful transfer.”
***
The hover-copter flew through the air at the fastest speed possible without risking crashing into any of the flying cars.
Although they were excited to be allowed to actually travel to the 4th level, there was no talking as they had been on shift all day and just wanted to complete this mission as fast as possible so that they could return to their families who were waiting for them.
Beeeeeeeeeeep!
A red light lit up on the holographic dashboard and a loud warning signal blared out throughout the hover-copter.
“What’s going on?” asked one of the police officers in the back.
“S-somethings locking onto us!” said the first pilot as he was tapping through several warning messages.
“What! I thought you checked the codes before we left! If we get shot down by the city’s defense system because you were too lazy…”
“I did check them! They are up to date! The signals are not from the city defenses! And the number of signals are increasing!”
“Inform HQ! Ask for help!”
“I’ve been trying! Nothing is getting through!” said the co-pilot.
“Hold on! I’m going to start evasive maneuvers!”
The hovercopter that was flying high in the air dipped down from the mostly wide open sky and started to hug the buildings as it weaved in and out of the maze of buildings trying to break the locks of whatever was targeting them.
“It’s no use! Whatever is chasing us has a solid lock on us!” said the co-pilot as he was tapping through the constant warning notifications with one hand while trying to make a call to HQ with his second hand. “Incoming! 1, no 2, uh 6…”
The hover-copters radar showed over half a dozen incoming missiles flying towards them.
The blips of light on the radar were approaching them at a speed that made the speeding hover-copter, which was weaving in and out of the gaps between the buildings, look like it was standing still.
“Launch the flares!” ordered the pilot.
Poof, Poof, Poof! Several flares shot out behind them and flared up, lighting the area and causing several bright heat signatures to appear behind them.
The approaching blips on the radar could now be seen with their own eyes through the rear cameras and their hearts sank as they watched the missiles pass the flares and…
Kaboom! Kaboom!
Several small but loud explosions could be seen several hundred feet up in the air as its tail and over mechanics were repeatedly hit causing them to lose power and begin falling…
***
A group of gray exoskeletons holstered their shoulder launchers after seeing the target falling.
“Who shot the main body? You were told to only hit the tail and other parts. We need the main body intact so that we can confirm that the target is inside.”
“Stop complaining. We need to hurry up and finish the job before the news drones arrive. How much more time do we have?” said a second person in one of the gray exoskeletons.
“The jamming should last at least 10 more minutes.”
“That’s enough time. Let’s go.”
They rushed towards the crash site where the hovercopter lay in a crumpled mess on its side. Its tail had been blown off and the hover mechanics were blown to bits, the gray exoskeletons did not waste any time inspecting it and just tore open the side door and looked inside.
“Help…” came the voice of one of the police officers who was amazingly still alive.
“Target located.”
“Permanently normalize those still alive. We’ll have to take their bodies with us, just leave the target inside.”
Bang! Bang! Bang!
7 high-powered shots rang out as they enacted their orders without hesitation.
***
“As you can see something happened to the police hover-copter that was transporting the leader of the underground RYU ‘Family’,” said Fela narrating the footage of the news drone as it zoomed in on the crashed hover-copter.
“Reports state that there were several large explosions from missiles slamming into it. The Office of Reason suspects that this was an act of defiance done by the underground families to stop them from interrogating him and learning new secrets,” said Kommy.
“The only body inside the wreck appears to be that of the former leader of the RYU family. There are no bodies of the police who were escorting him.”
“It could have been…” the news broadcast was turned off leaving the room dark so that those gathered only appeared as shadows.
“I will only ask this once… Was this done by any of your family members?” asked a dark figure holding back his rage that was mixed with grief.
“This is the first meeting between each of the Family heads since the bloody war and that is what you want to ask us?”
“You know the answer already! After all we have gone through, how could we attack the old man!”
“We are constantly being raided by the Office of Reason every other week. It would be impossible to hide such large weapons like what they are describing.”
“Right, it’s hard enough to hide all our small arms from their prying eyes let alone something so large and eye-catching.”
“Then someone must be targeting us and trying to turn public opinion against us,” said the angry dark shadow.
“This is nothing new. We already know the culprits. It has to be either the Office of Reason or Mother and Father.”
“It doesn’t matter which one since they are the same entity.”
“Then we are all in agreement on what to do?”
“Correct. If they want to start a war we will not cower!”
