For an hour or so, the riots continued unabated. Those leading them were quite happy, and patting themselves and each other on the back. After all, no matter what intelligence agency they worked for, whether it was the CIA, Mossad, MI6, MSS, or any of the many, many others working as instigators, they had all been “in the trade” for long enough that they could spot familiar faces in the crowds around them.
Spies were generally valuable, and when caught, they would be ransomed by their agency at a reasonable price. So interagency friendships and rivalries were generally of the polite sort and rarely close in the case of friendships—after all, friends today could find themselves on opposite sides and working at cross purposes tomorrow—while their rivalries rarely, if ever, reached the point of a blood feud. And for the same reason, at that; enemies today could find themselves working together tomorrow.
So they all knew at least one of the other instigators, and everyone knew what they were there for. Thus, they had been tacitly cooperating with each other in the field, just like the upper management were cooperating with each other back in their agencies’ headquarters.
That made things difficult for the nyxians, who were trying to pluck them out unnoticed so as to avoid a completely uncontrolled stampede, and an absolute nightmare for the police officers attempting to corral the unruly mobs. Eventually, the police were forced to simply set up a cordon and try to contain the rioting and damage to lower-value areas along the path of their march.
And that proved to be enough, as soon, sharp-eyed rioters near the leading edge of their individual mobs spotted a dark blob a distance away from them, behind the officers’ cordon. Moment by moment, the blob grew more distinct until they could make out what appeared to be individuals in fancy riot gear and bright colors that would stand out in the crowd, as opposed to the police forces’ general propensity for dark-colored uniforms like navy blue and black.
“What the hell are those things?”
One by one, people started to grow still as the individuals approached. Some were on foot, while others were flying out of the cube that the rioters could see off in the distance.
Aron had purchased robotics some time ago from the system, and had since been working on incorporating robots into his forces. Whether they be the cerberus mulebots, general repair and maintenance bots, or the constructor swarms he had used to build the cubes around the world in order to disguise the capabilities of the atomic printers at his disposal, all of them had long entered service and proven themselves. Now, the unruly citizens in the mobs were about to be introduced to his latest brainchild, the LEA-001.
Named the Law Enforcement Auxiliary, the robots were designed with a human appearance in mind, and Aron had gone so far as to introduce variable shapes and sizes in the manufacturing process to enhance their humanlike appearance. No doubt people would definitely notice that they were robots, or perhaps clones, if all of them were exactly the same as the one next to them.
They were dressed in white fabric that was shock resistant, bulletproof, fireproof, and corrosion resistant, and layered atop that was their “armor”—azure blue enameled plates of the same hadfield steel and chromium alloy that protected the atomic printers still hard at work cleaning up the mess left by the destroyed satellites. The armor consisted of a breastplate, spaulders, upper cannons, vambraces, codpiece, culet, cuisse, and greaves that covered their standard-issue boots. And on their heads was a close-fitting three-quarter helmet with a visor slit of smoked glass that attached to a gorget that rose from the breastplate to the jawline, leaving their humanlike mouths on display.
(Ed note: Picture Robocop, but palette swapped from black to white and with a more obvious visible shade of blue for the armor plating and you’ll be close to what LEAs look like.)
The armor had black trim on the edges of the plates and gold accents denoting ranks and a golden police badge on the left side of their chest. On the right side of their chest were the letters “LEA”.
As they were meant for police work, rather than serving on the battlefield, they were only armed with a charge pistol and a rifle variant. Most of the time, the rifles would be left behind when they were deployed, to make them appear less threatening, but for today’s deployment, they were present in the arsenal of every LEA that swarmed out of the cubes.
“Are those... robots? Or ARES troops? How the fuck can they fly?”
Questions like those were being shouted back and forth in the now-stalled crowds as the flying and marching LEAs rapidly reached the front line of the protests and the rooftops of mostly intact buildings around them.
The LEA in the lead of the marching reinforcements raised “his” hand and all of them came to a halt in an eerie display of synchronization.
“He” raised a microphone to his mouth and speakers hidden somewhere in the armor of every LEA crackled to life as the leader said, “Citizens, this has been deemed a violent protest and is in violation of Article I of the constitution. Lower your weapons and lie face down on the ground. I repeat, lower your weapons and lie face down on the ground. You have sixty seconds to comply or you will be made to comply.”
The LEA commander replaced the microphone “he” was speaking into and stood ramrod straight and stock still, waiting for the mob to comply with his order. Although the LEA series robots were equipped with fully functioning AIs, they were limited to the processing power of a quantum microcomputer reaper implant, so they were rather rigid in their speech and in the way they carried out their duties.
Similar scenes played out around every protest that was near a cube, or at least near enough to one that it could dispatch LEAs to arrest the violent protesters.
