Vrooom!
Arron shot down the main highway of sector 12 in the light night traffic. He was enjoying a ride on his completely repaired and modified Hover-cycle now that the after-work rush hour had thinned out hours ago.
Luckily, with a few words from the chief, the paperwork had gone through with the Office of Reason allowing him to register the modified prototype as a legal street vehicle.
As he shot down the night street at a high speed, the backlight on his hover-cycle gave off a bright neon glow making it look as if he had a long blurry neon tail shooting out behind him for anyone that cared to look at him passing by.
The feeling of the wind crashing into him as he sped down the highway, and seeing the rough para-concrete below him rushing by in a blur, it was all a wild rush that he had never felt before as he continued to weave in and out of the light traffic. This speed and power was something that the portable hover-bike would never be able to achieve.
“Arf!” Chewy gave a happy robotic bark. She was sitting on the back of the hover-bike strapped down with several metal belts and clamps.
To add to the wild feeling of driving on the highway, his helmet was blasting new underground city-pop songs which were all sung by humans. The music touched him at a deeper level than any of the robotic or AI singers that were popular right now. So he did not think twice when he had been offered the chance to buy a secure data-chip containing the new songs when he was out on another date at the [Red Light] bar.
Buying such things was really in the gray area and Yumi seemed to not mind that he bought potentially illegal material that could get the both of them in trouble with the Office of Reason.
Unfortunately Arron was not driving alone, he was following a large force of M1 officers who were all heading to their temporary new assignment which was partly a result of the recent rise of separatist violence.
Ahead of him, Kix was driving the APC behind other M1 officers. In the sky, several new prototypes of small one-man hover-copters swiftly flew through the air escorting them. This was their first official flight and unlike the large hover-copters, these were very small and only allowed for one m1 officer to stand up and hold onto the controls.
The standing pilots were encased in a lightly armored shell which offered high mobility and speed that the normal hover-copters could not even come close to due to its size. They were small enough to fit at least four into the same spot that a regular hover copter would take up. Its small size also allowed it to do insane maneuvers that were impossible for a regular-sized hover-copter.
The armaments that each of the one-man hover-copter carried were two mini-guns and a grenade launcher which was enough to take on most targets, even Mechanized worker bots if needed, although its ammo was limited.
The only downside, if you could call it that, was the light armor, its lack of sustained or heavy firepower, and the fact that there was no way [yet] to transport people or materials. If the current tests went well they would soon become a staple in the M1’s force. It would be one of its core fast reaction units for both supporting M1 officers on the ground as well as reaching hot areas first to try and stop ongoing crime.
Far ahead of Arron the night sky was lit up with various bright neon spotlights dancing in the sky high above a large round man-made lake. This lake was the main attraction of the newly finished park that had been constructed as part of the initiative to make the first level more lively.
Along with the flashing and strobing lights, there was a large holo-projection of a popular rock AI singer.
The new mission that Arron and the M1 officers had been given was to help the local police keep the park’s opening celebration concert under control.
The small M1 convoy slowed down and then turned off the main highway near the park’s main entrance, where they were forced to pass through a quick check to enter the small security parking lot that was wide open next to the large lake.
The six one-man hover-copters all landed in the designated hover-copter zones next to the parking lot and exited them to join everyone who was gathering to receive their orders from captain pointer, who was put in charge of the rag-tag team made up of several spare units.
The loud music was echoing across the lake and could be heard clearly where they were.
“You two, join the police officers at the rear. You two join the 20 officers at the front entrance,” said captain pointer as he pointed to various officers. He then turned to the 6 officers who had flown to the park in the one-man hover-copters. “You 6 need to stay in the nearby guardhouse until we need your help supporting any position. The rest of you will patrol the park to make sure that nothing sketchy is happening. Everyone needs to stay connected to the comms to receive new orders if there is a need for them.”
With their new orders given out, everyone split up.
Arron and Kix split off from the others, with Spike and Chewy walking beside them. They randomly picked a path to patrol and started walking down it.
Everywhere Arron looked the park was filled with young rebellious kids and teens that looked to be in middle school and high school. They were all wearing wild looking clothes, tight jeans, leather pants, tight tank tops, and t-shirts with cut off sleeves. Many of them had long hair that poofed out with some sort of hair spray to hold it, and almost everyone had a headband or bandanna.
“It’s the new rock style that younger kids have started using,” said Kix as he saw Arron gazing at the bizarre clothes and poofy hair.
“I wasn’t expecting to see such a style in the 12th sector, seeing as it is the most well-to-do sector of the first level where everyone dresses so properly,” said Arron.
“The majority of these teens are using this concert as their last time to mess around and have fun before they enter into their dull and dreary adult lives. All that waits for them is a year of mandatory college, some choosing to pay to extend their learning in hopes to get a better nonexistent job in these hard times with inflation so high. Everyone else will be forced to look for harsh and dirty jobs that they will have for the rest of their lives.”
“That sounds rather… bleak,” said Arron.
“They are far better off than those with D rank SCS. At least they will have a permanent job.”
Arron kept scanning his surroundings and was able to spot several of the discrete monitoring systems that filled the park which was at least double the size of the park in sector 11.
As they walked down one of the dimly lit paths, loud rustling sounds could be heard behind an artificial bush that was almost perfectly trimmed into the appearance of a large adult-sized square.
Both Arron, Kix, and the two robo-dogs turned their attention to the noise. Arron turned on his helmet’s floodlights, lighting up the area around the bush with a bright white light.
The bright light revealed two entangled teens that had been ‘wrestling’ in the dark. But now with the bright light illuminating them, they were like deer caught in the headlights as they stared back at the officers and robot dogs that were looking at them.
“…”
“Ehem… You are violating Mother and Fathers [Decency Act],” said Kix as he began typing up a document on his wrist datapad. “You must pay the fine for this ticket in 10 days. If you do not, the police will come to the both of your residences to receive the payment with an added tax.”
With a flick of his hand, he sent out two copies of the ticket, one to each of the teens, and then he just walked off as if nothing had happened.
“That’s it?” asked Arron as he followed Kix.
“What can I say? Mother and Father view certain crimes more important,” said Kix.
As they made their way down the dim path they met over 20 couples that were ‘wrestling’ behind bushes, benches, and trees, all having similar reactions to the first couple.
“Are we lucky or something?” asked Arron. “What’s with so many people picking this path to do their extracurricular activity?”
“I wouldn’t call it luck,” said Kix as they reached the end of the path. “Let’s check out the center where everyone is gathered. We should be able to see a lot more action.”
“How long is this celebration going to last?” asked Arron.
“About a week. Why? Are you planning on bringing your girlfriend here?”
Arron shrugged.
“Arf!” said Chewy unhappily.
As they made their way through the crowded area toward the center of the park, the music grew louder and louder. It was to the point Arron wondered how others without noise-canceling earbuds or helmets were protecting their ears.
“The music here is really pumping,” said Kix as he did some weird dance moves next to Arron. The dance moves definitely stood out as they did not match the feeling and actions of the others all around them who were head-banging along with the music with their fists held high in the air.
As they made their way through the crowd they passed through several violent mosh pits with people rushing into each other and falling into massive brawls that the hovering security drones only watched from above.
The current AI singer was a dark-clothed man with a deep guttural voice that Arron could hardly tell if it was speaking words or just gibberish disguised as words. Those rocking out to it did not care and just lost themselves into the mood that swept through the massive crowd.
Ping!
“We need backup at the front gate!” shouted one of the M1 officers that was helping the police.
“What’s wrong?” asked Captain Pointer.
“A growing group of red-clad Anti-sep has shown up. They are refusing to move away from the entrance. They are claiming that they are blocking the area to stop separatists from enjoying the celebration.”
“Kix, Arron, take your robo-dogs and help support the front gate. If there is anyone else near the entrance you can join them.”
Immediately Arron and Kix turned around exiting the massive crowd and headed toward the front entrance.
As they were running down the sidewalk Kix was still flinging out tickets to those he found ‘wrestling’ causing several squeals and surprised yelps as they received notification from their NerViz implants interrupting their activities.
“We have managed to push them back and are holding them off about a block away. The police are still in charge of scanning everyone else. If you don’t hurry we’ll be over-run.”
“Almost there, we can see the front entrance right now,” said Arron.
BOOM!
A large yellow mushroom fireball exploded at the front entrance of the park, engulfing the police and hundreds of citizens who were lined up waiting to enter.
The force of the explosion shook the ground like an earthquake and knocked both Arron and Kix off their feet.
“What the…” said Arron as he tried to stand back up.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Several more large explosions ripped through the loud rock music concert and the cheerful celebration, only to be replaced with cries of horror and pain.
The dark park that had only been lit up by the strobing neon spotlights and the holographic AI singers floating in the sky, was now lit up by several furiously burning fireball craters.
Hundreds of flying security drones began flooding into the park from the surrounding areas. Dozens of spotlights beamed out of their metal bodies as they flew over the dark paths lighting them up while recording everything as they searched for suspicious people in the mass craziness that had erupted inside the park.
While the security bots flew through the park their speakers repeatedly broadcasted the same message.
[Citizens, remain calm! Everything is under control!]
BOOM!
Another bomb exploded in the distance rocking the area while also lighting up the dark sky.
The floating holographic A.I. singer that was still singing, flickered for a second before it faded away along with the neon spotlights abruptly blinking out and going dark.
Arron’s head was spinning as he tried to stand up but continuously fell to his knees from dizziness. Although his ears were slightly ringing from being so close to the entrance explosion. His helmet had done its job and protected him better than the civilians that had been knocked out and were bleeding from their ears and nose because of the impact of the explosion.
“What the hell is going on? Rock, get back here, get up in the air with your men, and give us a view of the park!” shouted Captain Pointer using the secure comms.
“Cap… we’re on it captain!” said Rock reluctantly. He and the other nearby M1 officers had joined in helping push the anti-separatist back from the entrance. They had already chased them several blocks away after the explosions started.
“Everyone report your status!”
Almost everyone answered the call but at least four people were silent, whether they had been knocked out or were dead they could not know right at this moment.
“Arron, Kix, what’s the status of the entrance?”
Arron, who had managed to stand back up, did not answer immediately and just turned his helmet’s camera on and allowed the others to see everything he saw.
Nothing remained of the park’s front gates. There was now only a large crater that was still burning brightly as the bodies of the civilians that had stood near the outer edges continued to burn.
There were no traces of the bodies of the 20 police officers and several hundreds of citizens that had been crammed together near the gates. Everything had been blasted to smithereens and burned into ash from the initial blast.
As Arron was broadcasting the gruesome scene, the six one-man hover-copters launched into the sky and began broadcasting the other areas that had experienced explosions as they moved toward the affected zones to search the area for any suspicious people or for signs of more bombs.
The bombed areas all looked similar to the front entrance each having large craters that were still burning. But these craters were far too gruesome to look at as there were still several hundreds of people at the edge dying from the fire that had engulfed them, slowly turning them into charred husks.
Their video streams also showed the chaos of tens of thousands of people running away from the sites of the explosions, doing their best to escape the park, many of them had bloody and burnt clothes. In the chaos, an uncountable number of people of all ages, both male and female, were trampled by the crowd. It was hard to look for suspicious people with all this chaos happening. They would likely have to spend long hours pouring over the recorded footage later.
While Rock, who was closest to Arron and Kix’s position, was flying over a darker path with large bushes, Arron saw something flash on the live stream for a second.
“Rock! Turn around, there’s a suspicious person hiding in those bushes! Kix, hold down the fort here with Spike,” shouted Arron as he began running down the dark path toward the spot he had seen.
[Arf!] said Chewy as she ran next to Arron not wanting to be left behind.
Rock who had been flying at a high speed slowed down and did a quick pivot, turning 180* and headed back toward the spot Arron had pointed out. He turned the hover-copters’ floodlights all the way up to their highest setting, lighting up the area and leaving no darkness for anyone to hide.
On his second pass of the area, he stopped and hovered in the air as he found the target Arron had seen.
A man covered in red clothing and a face mask was revealed to be laying on the ground behind a bush struggling to pull something out of a large duffel bag.
“Troubled suspect! Halt what you are doing! I repeat, remove your hands from that bag!” shouted Rock using the hover-copters’ external speakers.
The red-clad target froze for a second like a deer in the headlights of a hover-car. But this only lasted for a few seconds.
The troubled target stopped trying to mess with the bag and instead dived for a small tube-like pipe next to him. He brought it up to his shoulder and pointed it at the one-man hover-copter.
Before Rock could react, a flash of fire exploded from the rear of the pipe and a projectile shot through the air and slammed into the left rotor of the hover-copter and exploded destroying the rotor!
“I’M HIT!” shouted Rock as he tried to control the spiraling hover-copter that now only had one rotor which was making the spiraling worse.
Arron watched as the out-of-control hover-copter crashed into several nearby artificial trees, snapping them in half and further smashing up the hover-copter as it slammed into the ground.
“Chewy chase that target!” shouted Arron as he ran toward the wrecked Hover-copter to try and rescue Rock before anything else happened to him.
[Arf!] Chewy let out a robotic bark of understanding and shot off toward the escaping troubled suspect.
Arron stumbled over the debris of the snapped hollow artificial trees and fell on top of the mangled hover-copter.
“What are you doing?” asked Rock in a pained voice as he heard a loud thump on the damaged armor.
“Sorry I tripped. Give me a second, I’m trying to open it up for you… but all the emergency switches are jammed or twisted into scrap,” said Arron.
He pulled out an emergency small blow torch which had enough power to cut open thick metal plates several times before running out of juice. He carried it just in case he ever got into a situation where he was stuck inside something after experiencing several close calls.
“Ow! That’s fooking hot! What are you doing!”
“Calm down! Just move your body away from the edge while I cut away the mangle parts so I can open up the hatch for you!”
“I’m crammed in here like a sardine! There’s no place for me to pull back!”
Rock continued to curse Arron the entire time until he was pulled out. He only had a few minor burns but had shallow cuts and large bruises covering his entire body.
“What the fook! These damn Office of Reason researchers are always trying to kill us with these crappy experimental death traps! The least they could have done is add decent armor to it! Don’t they have that new wonder formula? Why are we stuck still using the old stuff?” moaned Rock, as he was carried a short distance away from the wreck and gently placed on the ground so that Arron could properly give him some emergency first aid.
Arron was too preoccupied to shush Rock’s slanderous speech that could get him in trouble.
With a closer look at Rock’s body, Arron could see that his right arm and left leg were broken. It was surprising that Rock was still conscious and able to cuss and talk as much as he was with how severe his wounds were.
Arron placed a small capsule onto Rock’s right arm and pressed a button on the top immediately injecting a combination of a pain reliever and medicine designed to speed up the blood clotting to stop the bleeding.
“Not here! We need to get away! There’s a bomb over there!” said Rock, his voice slurring a bit as the drugs hit him like a truck.
“Why didn’t you tell me sooner!” said Arron as he scooped Rock up with one arm onto his shoulder. He used his other arm to grab a small disk device on his work belt and pressed the only button on it activating it before tossing it toward the bush that rock had pointed to.
His comms and the live streams from the others became full of static and garbled noise as he frantically carried Rock out of the blast area.
Rock, who was slumped over his shoulder, continued to moan from the pain of jostling his broken arm and leg as they ran away from the bomb.
While he was escaping Chewy ran up to him with her head held down and her usual wagging tail was drooping. There was a dark liquid still on her sharp metal teeth.
“Did you catch them?” asked Arron.
[Arf…] said Chewy, shaking her head.
“Ar…com… rep…” garbled messages continued to ring in his ear until he ran out of the range of the small portable jammer.
“Arron! Report your situation! What is going on!” shouted Captain Pointer.
“Rock and I are alive! We’re lucky captain, we have a possible gold mine to find out who these bombers were! There is a live and unexploded bomb behind me! I activated a jammer to block any signals from reaching it. The bombers will not be able to activate it remotely. All we need is a bomb squad from HQ to come and deactivate it, then we can comb it over for clues!”
“Great work! I’ll send in the request right now!”
“That won’t be necessary,” said Chief Chesty, his face popping up on the visors of every officer at the park.
“What? Why? If we don’t take care of it now it might go off later,” said Captain Pointer.
“The Office of Reason has ordered all police and M1 officers to stand down and head to the exits of the park. You are to provide security and block anyone from entering. They will be taking over everything else from here, including deactivating and investigating the bomb that was found. You are to provide whatever help they request.”
