Part 2

Captain Peter Stanton was a weapon and armament developer on Mainframe base, a research and development lab on a small island off the east coast of Japan run by the World Army. His usual task was developing and testing new weapons, but today he had been testing a new VR Training program. He stood watching the people still ‘playing’ for a while, then moved over to the men who had already came out.

“Hey! were you that infiltrator?” Someone asked him.

“I prefer ‘Saboteur’ really. I’m sure I know that voice,” he answered

“I was the soldier who caught you.”

“No, from somewhere else.”

“My name’s Luke, Captain Luke Walker”

“AKA ‘Sky-Walker’?”

The captain looked a bit closer. “Is that you Pete?”

“Yep, it’s me. At least I think so! Where you been all this time?”

“All over the place. You busy? ‘Cause I’ve got a job for you.”

“Thanks for reminding me!” He looked at his watch. “I’ve got to go. Meet me in the gun workshops in an hour.”

He left the VR room and went straight to his office. There, he started writing his report for General Philipson, his C in C.

Later, Peter was in his own workshop, working on his latest project when Luke arrived.

“What’s all this lot?” he asked, pointing to all the things on the benches.

“Modular weapons,” answered Peter without looking up.

“Which means?”

“See all these pieces. You can fit them together to make the right weapon for the task. There’s: long range and medium range rifle attachments, a silencer, telescopic sight, laser range finder and grenade launcher.”

“That’s amazing. Why has nobody thought of it before?”

“They have. It’s just no one’s ever made any, so I decided to try it. Did you say about a job for me?”

“Yeah. I need a hand with some reports”

“How many?”

“About 1,500.”

“What?”

“You know the main storage computer had a major problem last week and some of the archives were lost?”

“Let me guess, we’ve got to type them all back in?”

“Sort of. We’ve got to scan them all back in.”

“I suppose it is important. All right I’ll help, what do I have to do?”

“Well, someone brings a report from the paper archives, you put it through the scanner, I make sure the file’s all right and then the paper is put back.”

“Why pick me?” asked Peter suspiciously

Luke checked no one was about. “Because I know I can trust you! You will probably see some things written in top secret reports.”

Ten minutes later they were seated in the computer room. “Is this everyone?” Asked Peter, “I thought you’d have a big team working on this.”

“We haven’t got the facilities to have many people. Any more than four and we’d be tripping over each other.”

The team went on scanning for an hour. Pete’s eyes went over every document before he put it into the scanner. He noticed all sorts of things written on them: UFO sightings, new aircraft being tested, and all sorts of other things.

Then he picked up the next report, checked the date and serial number and pushed it into the scanner. As it was fed inside he noticed it was about a training exercise in the Sahara Desert. He picked up the next one, checked the date and serial number and pushed it into the scanner. As this one disappeared inside he noticed it was about the training exercise in the Sahara Desert finishing. He picked up the next one, checked the date and serial number and fed it into the scanner. As it went inside he saw it was about a helicopter crash near Cairo.

Then the rhythm was destroyed when Luke started choking. Peter got up and started thumping him on the back.

“Are you all right?”

“Yes, I’m fine now.”

Peter sat down and the man taking the papers back to the archive picked up the pile in front of him and took them away. He thought he heard some paper being screwed up, but thought nothing of it.

Another hour later and they called it a day. Luke went outside but Peter stayed behind a little while, something was wrong, He could smell burning. He then saw smoke coming out of the waste paper bin in the corner, grabbed a cup from the table next to him and threw it onto the smoldering paper. He fished out a piece of soggy paper and looked at it, all that was left on it was ‘Report no. 3867-0370’. Peter knew something was wrong and decided to keep the piece of paper, and then he ran off to find Luke.

He found him near the airstrip and was about to tell him about the paper when the sound of an aircraft filled the air. Everyone looked up to see a small plane with smoke coming out of one engine, which circled and came in to land. A loudspeaker came to life: “The plane that is about to land has been hi-jacked. We cannot talk them out of landing here and they want assistance with their damaged engine. We have reason to believe they have explosives aboard. The runway is now a high security area.”

The plane landed and some engineers rushed over to the engine to repair it. One of them, after looking inside the aircraft, came over to General Philipson. “It looks bad, sir. They’ve got a couple of bags of TNT on there, plus the hijacker has a bomb strapped to him. I can see two hostages and three other men.”

“What are we going to do?”

To be continued…

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