| Reporting... |
Small town, small crime
Ian leaned back in his chair, feet up on his desk, studying the clipboard in front of him. The officer who’d just handed it to him looked on expectantly.
“Zaku IIs, you need my entire squad to take out two borderline obsolete pieces of junk?” Ian sighed and tossed the clipboard by his boots.
“What’s wrong,” the officer asked, “something better to do?”
“Could be,” Ian said in a not quite sarcastic voice, “just seems a great big waste of resources is all.”
“These hoodlums have been disturbing causing a shitstorm for the last week. I want them gone, as in yesterday. I’ve got no problem with overkill. Sides you haven’t done anything but sit there for the last 2 days.”
Ian sighed, “Fine fine we’ll get on it. Give me five minutes.”
As the officer walked out Ian ran a hand through his hair. His complaining was more for show than anything else, his superior was right, they could use the exercise. Sides he liked playing with his new toy. The Mobile Armor he’d been assigned a month ago, one of the reasons they’d taken this assignment, was a fresh of breath air over the hand me down pieces of shit he’d had to wear over the last few years. One of the things he missed about the Military was the feeling of brand new armor. These things had that wonderful new car smell, rather than their previous occupant’s BO, once an odor got into the suit’s air scrubbers it took forever to get rid of.
Groaning he let his chair fall on all four legs and stood up, wincing he walked to the locker room, feeling the blood return to his feet.
…
“The Hell much longer you going to sit there?”
Hiromi ignored her, reading the data in front of him. His armor retracted save for his helmet which sat off to his side, a long data cable plugged to a port inside it, connecting to the portable computer he was hunched over. Amber was sitting on top of the work bench a few feet away, looking on bored.
They sat in the makeshift garage. The current precinct they worked in, on the outskirts of Atlanta proper, was housed in a former residence. It wasn’t bad all things considered, the proper building had been torched during a riot a couple months ago and repairs were still underway.
She snorted and looked away. “You know, the only way to increase synch rating is to use the damn thing right?”
“Until Ian gets something for us there’s no point in bitching about that stuff,” he said, distracted from the holo-projected screen. “I’m just making sure the gyro’s still calibrated.”
“It always has to be tech with you, are you an operator or a mechanic,” she muttered.
“Both,” he shot back.
“Hey! Don’t respond to my internal comments!”
“Maybe you should try making them internal then,” Hiromi said dryly.
“Alright that’s it,” she snapped, hopping down. “You want a go bangsat?!”
note Bangsat is roughly translated to Bastard in Indonesian
“You’re really annoying you know that?”
“Do something about it!”
“Hey hey, that’s enough,” Ian said as he walked into the Garage, Jean-Patrick behind him. “We have some work to do.”
“Bout time,” Amber muttered, calming down almost instantly.
“You sure you’re not Bipolar,” JP remarked calmly in his accented English.
“Screw you,” she snapped.
Ian coughed loudly. “ANYWAY, go ahead and suit up, I’ll transfer the specifics while we move.”
Hiromi shrugged, thinking the activation command. The Red Power Armor quickly unsheathed itself encasing him. Bending down he carefully picked up the helmet, delicately unplugging the cable, and placed it over his head. With a quiet hiss the suit sealed, the internal air scrubbers automatically reducing the temperature inside to a comfortable level. His eyes were full of opaque green for a moment as the suit’s software booted up; the green quickly fading away, the front visor becoming something of a one way mirror. He quickly cycled through various commands mentally, bringing up suit readouts, the top down map, targeting reticules, and various other readouts in his pre checks, standard fare for cold startups. Finally he settled on his normal vision mode. He looked around feeling the armor smoothly respond to his movements, his team mates were also just finishing up.
Ian shrugged his armored shoulders; a small star appeared above his head on Hiromi’s HUD.
“Everyone ready, he asked over the internal comms. The three gave slight nods, also identing their comm beacons, causing a visible ripple effect to radiate from their suits over their HUDs. These simple actions were the final startup checks, satisfied that his squad was ready Ian gestured and led them out, breaking into a run as they hit the street, their power armor assisted legs easily accelerating them to an easy 35 mile per hour. Ian instructed them to put their suits on auto run while he transferred the case files to them. The three pilots read through the case with varying degrees of interest.
“THIS is what they hand us?” Amber exploded, “Two broken down Zakus?”
“Fraid so,” Ian replied.
“It would seem we are not exactly a must needed commodity in this area,” JP commented. “The normal resources the police possess would be more than adequate in apprehending these perpetrators.”
Ian waited a moment. “What’s the matter Hiro,” he asked, “no input?”
“He’s probably forgotten how to key his mic up,” Amber said, her voice one of mock sweetness.
Hiromi ignored her. “I know we have plenty of transfer offers available Ian, why are we still here? We could at least go to Atlanta proper.”
”How does he always manage to guess what I’m about to say? Its creepy” Ian thought.
“Don’t worry all, I know we’re being wasted here. I was saving it as a surprise but what the Hell, I’m moving us to Atlanta after this case there let’s just beat the snot out of these two assholes and then we can get back and start packing. It’s already been cleared”
JP snorted, “I can imagine that conversation went well.”
“Yes yes the chief here couldn’t wait to get rid of us and have to start making his own officers do dirty work again. He’s a small fish in a big pond, don’t worry about it.”
“Twist my arm,” Hiromi muttered, his comm off for that comment.
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12:56 AM Aug 27