“I suppose so, and better you than me, buddy!” Fox said.
At only twenty-one, Fox had grown up with the ever-present threat of remote-control terrorism. Even still, Xander, at thirty-two, wondered how the young man could so easily accept — and reject — the threat facing every human being on the planet. At any given moment, it could be Charlie Fox lying dead at the entrance to a shopping mall somewhere, blindsided by an event that no one could predict or prevent. Yet he seemed to go about life without a care, even though he — better than most — knew the true nature of the danger. The most law enforcement could do was react to the events and limit the damage, while doing very little to prevent them.
Xander checked the clock. From first call to termination of op, the entire Miami event lasted eight minutes and sixteen seconds. That was about average for a non-explosive event. Fortunately, Miami had an ample supply of rapid-response drone bunkers available to answer the call when the time came. If not, the death toll could have been in the hundreds.
As the senior operator on duty — hell, he was the most senior pilot in the entire Center — he would be credited with a successful operation, even though over sixty people died during the attack. The brass in D.C. had a strange set of algorithms that weighed the number of potential victims against the actual casualties, along with the property damage suffered, to determine whether an operation could be deemed a success or not. In Xander’s mind, this one wasn’t, but he knew his supervisors would see it differently.
Xander cringed at the thought, yet when considering the five-thousand, eight hundred and forty-two people killed so far this year by remote assaults, it was a rather low body count, especially when a Ninja was involved. And compared to the days before the RDC was created, it was a marked decrease in casualties, even as the number of attacks grew exponentially each year.
These thoughts didn’t help how Xander Moore felt. He knew another psych eval would be called for soon; it was common in pilots his age. He shook his head. As far as he could recall, neither Fox nor Lane had ever been called in for a follow-up eval, at least not beyond their initial employment screening.
Is the younger generation that jaded, that acclimated to the horror we face every day that it doesn’t bother them anymore? Xander asked himself. Do they really treat their jobs like a video game?
He’d had frank conversations with his appointed shrink about this very topic. Dr. Tricia Ainsworth explained how younger people had the ability to block out the danger they faced by experiencing life in smaller segments, content to act in episodes rather than over the long term. It was a contributing factor why most of them rented rather than owned such things as homes, music, videos and books. They lived for the moment, since without warning it could all come to a sudden and tragic end.
In the past, Xander had tried to live by that creed, but had failed on each occasion. He was more of a long-term strategist, which required as a prerequisite the belief that one would live long enough for well-laid plans to be realized. This philosophy helped him accumulate more material goods than most of his counterparts — which they passively envied — yet it also helped to foster an underlying paranoia in him about leaving the house each day.
Maybe he felt this paranoia more acutely than the general public because of his job. After all, he faced the reality of this new and growing brand of terrorism every day. It was his responsibility to fight evil acts with equal deadly force, so he ate, slept, and breathed the nightmare. For the vast majority of the world, the reality of this new phase of human debauchery was simply more headlines and news flashes, something others experienced but not them. Even though the danger was real — and they knew it — there was nothing they could do about it personally, so why worry? All they could do was continue living as best they could, content in the knowledge that there were people like Xander Moore out there protecting them. That was all they needed to know, that was all they wanted to know.
Yet the public also had to be constantly reminded of this fact, otherwise they would become restless and demand more security from their leaders. And the politicians knew that if voters felt that their current crop of leaders couldn’t provide that feeling of security, then maybe the next batch could.
Hence another interview to keep the masses placated.
As the Rapid Defense Center’s senior operator — indeed a pioneering member of the drone corps itself — Xander endured these kinds of interviews nearly every month. His identity was protected — that was the paramount condition before an interview would be granted — even though he was becoming somewhat of a shadow celebrity to the media personalities who had access to the Center. His bosses preferred for Xander to present the government’s side of the story rather than some pimple-faced kid barely out of high school. His advanced age — for the profession, anyway — added a layer of credibility to the narrative, and his superiors knew it.
Eventually Xander Moore would become too well-known to remain a pilot. He would then be bumped up to a more visible role within the organization — unless he opted for a new identity and a fresh start. After a particularly bloody op — such as today’s — he tended to come down strongly on the side of a fresh start. To remain at the Center, yet without a controller in his hand, would be more than he could take. Even though he resented the fact that his job existed, he nevertheless acknowledged its necessity.
In the enlightened times of the early 2030s, why people still insisted on killing their fellow man was beyond him — and in such ruthless and savage ways. It seemed that the more technology advanced, the more creative people became with regards to killing their neighbors. Where these advances had once been lauded as the saviors of mankind, the naked truth was that many made it easier for sick minds to cause even more carnage. Now the most horrific crimes imaginable could be perpetrated against almost any target from halfway around the world, and with objects that were essentially toys.
Already this year, three attempts had been made on the life of the U.S. president. The situation was so serious he rarely ventured out in public anymore. After all, what would stop a radicalized Muslim located somewhere within the Islamic State from toggling a control knob, sending a suicide drone crashing into the president’s podium during a speech at the annual White House Easter Egg Hunt? Although many remedies had been tried in the past, the answer still remained a qualified nothing — nothing could guarantee against such an attack.
The former president of Uganda had recently experienced such an attack, yet without the backup that an agency like the RDC offered. Even though the initial assassination attempt failed, the RPA attack drone then spent over twenty minutes methodically stalking the president throughout his palatial compound, before eventually locating him in an upstairs closet. If there had been an RDC-type response to the attack he might be alive today.
Nearly every month a world leader was attacked in such a manner, with the fatality rate climbing rapidly as more sophisticated attack drones were built and deployed. Now one-in-three leaders targeted by drones could expect to die in such an attack. First World countries like the United States, Britain, and most of Europe, lowered those odds considerably. Yet that only meant attacks on leaders of less-developed nations succeeded in nearly every case. And these assassinations could be carried out notoriously and in plain sight, without any direct exposure of the perpetrators.