Chapter 29: Gear Up!

“What's with her?” asked Kix. He pointed to Kellery, who was stomping out of the M1 HQ.

“I told her I was unfamiliar with her work,” said Arron, walking out of the small side room.

“So how did the interview go?”

“Ehhh... not horrible...I think?”

“Oh boy, I can't wait to read the hit piece that will be published later,” said Kix as the two walked towards the Mag-shoot.

“Is every interview like this?”

“Her whole job is to find things she thinks are bad, and make a stink about it. This may be your first interaction with the media, but I doubt it will be your last now that you have joined M1. I suggest you get used to the media not being nice. If you want to get a fair shake, you need to look out for yourself since they along with the politicians and the other mobs will throw you under the bus if it suits their narrative.”

“That bad?”

“Worse than that. Mother and father created a majority of the media regulations and speech codes to be obtuse. Because of that, anyone who produces any type of media will willingly silence anyone they think is not talking or thinking correctly. Anyone, no matter who it is. There is a thin line and if you step over it... you are playing with your life and you may end up disappearing.”

Ding!

The two once again arrived at the locker room and dropped off their other personal items, as well as hanging up a set of civilian clothes and a second clean uniform inside the locker.

Kix took a look at the holographic work schedule on his holo wrist datapad.

“Right, looks like we're on patrol duty for now until you finish your probation, or if the chief changes his mind. Let's head to Garage 23 and get the rest of our gear ready.”

Kix walked over to the far end of the locker room and waved his hand over the old scanner lock. The wall opened up to reveal a spiral staircase that went up as far as Arron could see and also descended even farther down.

Various sounds echoed throughout the para steel circular stairwell lit with dim yellow lights on the wall.

There were sounds of electric tools, the rotor blades of one of the M1's transport hover-copters, and many bangs and curses from the mechanics.

When both Kix and Arron stepped on the right side of the stairwell it started to quickly move down deeper underground. It stopped when they had reached a large black parasteel door marked with yellow 23.

After a swipe of his hand over the holo-lock, the sturdy door opened allowing Arron and Kix to enter.

The lights inside garage 23 turned as soon as the door opened revealing a small cramped garage that already held an angular armored hovercar that took up most of the room. It was slimmer at the front and was larger and boxy at the rear.

It was painted similar to M1 uniforms with dark blue covering the majority of its body, with white checkers on both sides, and a large white M1 on the hood. The glass was covered in a silver two-way tint that prevented anyone from looking inside.

“That Is the most recent ERF prototype APC v.6 that Mother and Father gave us. You could say we're lucky to have this as our patrol vehicle. That is if you compare it to the problems in v.1-5. Hopefully, all those problems have been fixed. I heard that they added a lot of new toys in her, so we have to field test her while on our patrols,” said Kix.

He walked over to the left wall of the garage where several pieces of equipment were hanging or stored on shelves and started pulling several of them off of the wall.

“Prototype APC v.6? Is it any good?”

“It's better than nothing. The armor is A7 parasteel and can withstand small arms and regular rifle rounds. Anything bigger... nope. Don't even get me started on v.1-2. Those pieces of trash were just modified mass-produced A1 and A3 parasteel hover cars. They were just metal coffins.”

“Really? All the hover cars I've seen look sturdy.”

“Sure they look like that, but they're all trash. Bullets and sharp objects pass right through them and they crumble at the slightest touch. The only part that is worth a damn is the underbelly due to all the metal parts and plates underneath.”

“Best put on your heavy chest armor now,” said Kix as he tossed a light black helmet over to Arron. “Our new helmets. Make sure that you plug the attached cable into your NerViz implant.”

After getting the heavy chest armor on Arron plopped the light metal helmet visor on his head. There were two cables on the back of the helmet causing him to fumble around with each trying to see which one would fit into the NerViz slot. It didn't help that his neck was partially obstructed by the heavy chest armor that he now wore.

When he successfully plugged the wire into the slot a two-way mirror visor slid down covering his face.

Holographic green text appeared on the visor. [New user... Loading default secure M1 software... complete!]

On the top left of the visor, Arron could see the date and time as well as his exact location.

Underneath this was the words [Officer Arron. Stream active.] On the right side were three main options that he could use for quick action: [Logistics], [Call HQ], [Media].

“Here, take these magnetic cuffs, and put on these boots. They're the newest AB V.3,” said Kix.

When Arron looked over to Kix a white box appeared around his face and a quick scan happened in less than a second turning green, above his head was his name, age, SCS, and government ID. Under that were the words [No warrants][Security level to low for Further information].

Arron took the Magnetic cuffs and hung them on his new heavy utility belt. He took off his civilian shoes and picked up one of the black AB V.3, which were large knee-high metal combat boots. It looked like a piece of hockey sports equipment from back when humans actually played sports.

It felt quite heavy and rigid making Arron wonder how he was supposed to move around wearing such clunky things. He put his right leg into one of the boots all the way, it felt as if he was sticking it into a container of cool jelly.

The many metallic straps on the boot immediately tightened so that the boot fit snugly, not allowing any wiggle room. Arron quickly put on the other boot and then stood up.

Despite the obvious extra weight, it was surprisingly still easy to move around but now there were soft clacks as he walked.

“These bad boys will keep your legs safe from most everything except for heavy arms or point-blank explosions. They can also magnetically lock onto any metal, or at least that's what the researchers claim. It comes in quite handy in many situations,” said Kix, slapping his armored boots as he stood up.

He pulled down a small one-inch square piece of parasteel from the wall and tossed it over to Arron. “There should be a slot on the upper left of your chest armor, put that there.”

The square piece of Parasteel was sucked into the slot and became extremely sturdy, unable to move. Kix tapped on his square metal piece and a holographic badge appeared projecting out his information [M1: Officer Upreme, ERF 3-3-1].

Arron tapped on his square piece and his holographic badge appeared: [M1: Officer Wynterz, ERF 3-3-2].

Kix walked to the back of the Armored vehicle and opened the back door revealing a parasteel cell with enough room to fit at least 6 people comfortably three on each bench. On the floor was a large metal box. Kix tapped a yellow button on the side and read the information that was spat out.

“Just making sure the light armored exoskeleton is still ok,” said Kix.

“Why do we have an Exoskeleton? Isn't that something for Ward and Knox?” asked Arron.

“You expect us to go out and have to wait on those two if we run into trouble? If crap really hits the fan you'll wish we had two of them. Even though this is just the P.L.E.v.2 [Portable light exoskeleton], it is better than nothing. Since you have no experience with stuff like this I'll be handling it for now. You need the proper muscles and reflexes to use them or you will end up hurting yourself or worse,” said Kix.

He tapped on a few buttons connected to the door and turned the electric security screen on and off to make sure it was working.

5 bolts of electricity shot back and forth separating the cell and the door.

“You get to test out this new prototype instead,” said Kix with a smile as he pulled out a compact but heavy metal case that had been sitting behind the PLE, and handed it over to Arron as he slammed the rear door shut.

“Portable motorcycle v.1. Just press the red button to unlock and the green to bring out the motorcycle. Just don't do it here as we don't have enough space and you would damage it and the APC. It's for getting around if the APC breaks down or if we can't get into an area with the APC. Hurry up and get in! We're ready to head out!”

“What about my sidearm?” asked Arron as he opened the right-side door.

“It's in the front console, just put your hand on it and it will pop out after scanning,” said Kix as he entered the left side and sat behind a steering wheel.

The dark interior of the car was lit up by the dashboard that also presented all the information his visor had, as well as even more options such as holographic maps and a new prototype level one GPS Pixi system, for navigating manual vehicles.

“What? This has manual steering?” asked Arron.

“Of course, otherwise how could we do our job?” asked Kix while he pressed one of the options on the dashboard.

[Please wait, all elevators are currently being used.] said a robotic female voice.

“You gotta be kidding me! We have ten elevators and all of them are in use?”

They had to wait for over 5 minutes before the front wall of the garage opened, revealing a large square platform.

Kix revved the engine and drove out of the garage onto the platform. The front garage door closed behind them before the platform started to rise heading to the main ground-floor exit.

“Hehe... this baby also has a new option we might be able to test out later. With a flip of this switch, wheels pop out and we can drive around with them. Although I haven't driven anything with wheels before how hard could it be? Should be simple enough,” said Kix.