Office Wars
Peter huggins sat down behind his desk as he did every day to work. Peter worked in the IT department of a large corporate office, what exactly the office did he wasn’t sure. The day was ordinary enough as he conversed with his coworkers and checked the network and the servers for problems. About mid morning someone from sales came out of the elevator, everyone groaned at this. Sales people never understood what went on down here and either asked a stupid question that they had answered a hundred times before or they belittled what they did down here. Today was no exception to this state of affairs as the sales person walked right up to Peter.
“There is a problem with the network, fix it.” The sales person said to Peter as he stood there with his coffee mug in one hand.
“What exactly is the problem with the network?” Peter said trying to control his anger at this demand.
“I don’t know, it’s just not working for me. So throw a couple of switches and plug in some wires or whatever to make it work.” The sales person said turning around and walking back towards the elevator. The other IT people tried to console Peter by pointing out that the guy was obviously on a lower standard than stupid. Peter would not be consoled today though, he had heard the same demand fifty times before and now was the time to put an end to this.
Walking over to his desk Peter pulled out a gun that shot spit wads, he then proceeded to fire it at the sales person as he was about to hit the elevator button. The spit wad hit the man right in the back of the head and he fell forward and collapsed. The rest of the IT department gasped at this, no one had done this before. The guns were there in case someone went berserk, in that case the rest of the office was tasked to stop them. People were already reaching into their desks for their own guns to put a stop to this.
“Hold on everyone, we have tolerated this for eight years. We have put up with their stupid comments and idiotic suggestions, the time has come we show this office who really runs the show here. If we can take control of the building then we can all be the executives that step down on the morons that don’t know what they’re doing. Join me and we will be kings!” Peter said looking around at the fifty IT people in the room, they all wanted something better than working in the basement of this place dealing with morons all day. Could it work though, no one had ever tried something like this before.
“I’m in, we’ve put up with them for too long.” Bob said standing next to Peter, Bob was the manager of the entire department down here. After Bob joined on the rest of the department followed and they began to gather weapons and formulate a plan, they would do it today. They couldn’t stop until they had conquered the building, if they hesitated they would fall.
All doors to the outside were locked remotely and Peter left three IT people behind to work the network as they moved upstairs. The first floor was reception and there were two receptionists and a security guard on duty. They were dispatched easily as the group moved to the stairs to make their way to the second floor. There was a supply closet on the second floor that should be of use and it was also the floor of the dreaded sales people. Peter led the way up the stairs and they walked onto the sales floor with everyone in their little cubicles on the phone, the phone lines had been cut only minutes before so everyone was in a state of confusion. Peter’s group fanned out looking like they were here because of that, it was working until Peter walked right up to manager of the floor and shot him twice in the chest. The floor erupted into chaos but Peter’s team had already positioned themselves, most went down in the first volley but one person managed to use the interoffice network to send out a message. The IT people in the basement were unable to snag the message before it alerted the rest of the building.
“Take their headsets, communication will be easier now.” Peter said grabbing a headset and walking over to a computer. “Tune the headsets to channel 8 and someone send three down to our comrades in the basement.”
“The floor is cleared Kingmaker.” Bob said through the headset. Peter thought about the word Kingmaker and he liked it.
“Bob you will be black bishop, Kevin you are black knight, and Mary you are black queen. Remember your call signs and put together your teams, they will know we are coming this time. Basement team you will be HQ.” Peter said organizing everyone into groups so they could move easier. “HQ, send me floor plans for the second floor to terminal 12.”
The plans came up on the screen and Peter gave them a quick look over before calling his generals to him. They all looked at the floor plan on the screen noting each and every exit and the locations of any supply closets. Just then a call came in over the headset from one of the IT guys doing a search of the floor.
“Found the supply closet sir.” The man said over the headset.
“Good, bring everything out into the conference room.” Peter said looking back to the plans he had. “Alright black bishop you will enter through the door and proceed left towards the managers office. Black Knight proceed straight through the door with your team and take cover they will be trying to plan something. Black queen you and I will head right towards the supply closet. Watch your crossfire everyone and keep in communication at all times.”
The group nodded to each other as Peter walked over to the conference room to see what they had recovered. Staples, rubber bands, paper and paperclips mostly, not quite what he wanted but it would have to work. A sound was heard as the elevator stopped at the floor and everyone moved into a position to shoot whoever was inside. Inside the elevator was the man Peter had sent down to give headsets to HQ. He walked over to peter with a large box and set it down on the table.
“Kiko from downstairs says she has been working on these for a few months now.” The man said pulling out what looked vaguely electronic with wires coming out of everywhere and an unmistakably short barrel. “She says it fires rubber bands at a fast rate.”
Peter nodded his approval and distributed the ten that were made among the teams, each would take a bit to reload so he gave instructions to cover each other as they reloaded. Those using the new weapon each took several bags of rubber bands, the rest were spread out amongst the rest as they took the guns the salesmen had. These new guns used rubber bands mostly but the occasional paper clip firing weapon was found. With the plan laid out and ammo distributed the IT group moved to the stairwell. Peter hit the up button for the elevator and hit the button for floor three before he went into the stairwell.
The group gathered in the stairwell outside the third floor, Bob’s group would go in first, then Kevins and finally Mary and Peter’s. The man at the door heard the ding of the elevator and nodded, the door was swung open and the IT group stormed the room. Everyone was moving according to plan but already there were two casualties, this floor housed marketing so the employees were using their gigantic sales charts as shields as they fired back. Peter and Mary were moving along the right wall towards the supply closet and were encountering minimal resistance.
“Ambush! Kingmaker this is black bishop, we have been ambushed and are cut off from the main force. Request assistance over!” Bob said over the radio, as soon as he said that two people from the back of his line fell. Peter ran forward with the rest and opened a supply closet door for a makeshift shield.
“This is Kingmaker, reserve unit enter the room and head for black bishop’s group on the left side, I repeat left side!” Peter said as he reached around the door and fired at his ambushers.
The reserve unit was the unit Peter would normally leave but he left them behind just in case of such an event. The unit came through the door and moved along the left wall until they came behind the enemy position harassing Bob’s group. The unit quickly dispatched them and moved off to the right wall to deal with the second ambush.
Peter was still firing when he heard the reserve unit told him to hold his fire as they got into position. Peter was pulling back his arm when something struck his hand, he dropped his gun and pulled behind the door. Peter removed the staple from the back of his hand, it just grazed it but it still hurt.
“Kingmaker, are you injured?” Mary said looking down at Peter’s hand.
“It’s just a scratch, no big deal.” Peter said grabbing his gun and waiting for word from the reserve unit. Mary took a handkerchief out of her pocket and tied it around Peter’s hand concealing the wound. Peter nodded his thanks as he received word from the reserve team that they were clear.
“This is black knight to Kingmaker, we could use some help down the center. I can’t get past the goddamn shields.” Kevin said as he ducked back behind a filing cabinet.
“Black bishop, see if you can move behind the enemies position, we will try and do the same. Watch your crossfire everyone!” Peter said signaling for the reserve team to join them. Peter handed out two large charts that seemed to have been ditched in the closet some time ago. Peter moved towards the back of the office and met up with Bob, they both made their way behind the marketers position and began firing. When the marketers turned to deal with this new threat they got hit in the back by Kevin’s team.
“Clear.” The word came from all teams as they quickly swept the office for any survivors. They had lost eight people in this assault, but everyone knew they couldn’t stop until they took the whole building.
“Collect the shields and see if the guns are useful. HQ, need a floor plan for the fourth floor on terminal thirty-eight.” Soon after Peter said that the floor plan came up on the screen. This place would be tricky, it was accounting and the entire floor was a cubicle maze. There were a lot of routes that they could take but every one of them could easily lead to an ambush. “Alright everyone here is what we are going to do. Black bishop, you are taking the elevator up with your team and once it hits the floor, hit the stop button to make sure the doors don’t open. Open them when we tell you to, not a moment before.”
“Black knight you will be taking the stairs and will enter first, remember one shield in the front and one in the rear at all times. I will enter about ten seconds after your team goes. Remember to clear each and every cubicle, memorize this plan everyone because once we go up there we will be in a whole mess of cubicles. HQ, when I tell you to shut down the lights on that floor, the emergency lights will come on soon after but it might give us a better shot.” Peter said turning to Kevin, this plan would have to work.
------Will Peter take his war all the way to the top? Find out tomorrow.
You'll have to forgive the grammatical and spelling errors. It was one of my earlier stories and I just didn't feel like cleaning it up at this point. Hopefully soon I'll have some newer stories to post up here.
All the luck in the world
-Botched
No comments:
Post a Comment