"Raiders 2020"
  A Parallel Novel / Game Development (low-intensity) Project

The back story.

It is May, 2020. Commerce, and the mega-conglomerates that drive most international trade influence relationships within and between countries more than at any other time in history. As such, large scale conflict resulting from ideological differences, belligerance born of opposed government positions, policies, philosophies, resource ownership, or diplomatic failure has virtually disappeared. Such chaos is bad for business. Conflict resolution these days tends to be between corporations and is prosecuted within formal parameters, always with an eye to commercial stability. The bottom line is everything and nothing interferes with the bottom line. International law has become more situational than ever and violations--or preceived violations--are usually addressed by Boards of Directors and the Global Executives Consortium (GEC). For more than a decade, the keys to power have been cut on the remorseless grinding wheel of the P&L.

Only one thing commands more consideration than the quest for increasing market capital—acquisition of Triton crystals.

Triton crystals, refined by almost impossibly complex processes, revitalize and repair living tissue. Ingested or injected, they increase biological efficiency....in everything: Disease resistance, oxygen utilization, synaptic response, nutrient processing, sensory awareness. Life becomes brighter when one has had triton treatments. On the average, under tailored triton treatment plans, sensory acuity can be improved 250 -300%. Reflex times can be reduced by 150 to 200%. Mental processing speed, critical thinking ability, and memory retrieval becomes startlingly improved. Perception and awareness can be expanded or speeded at will, especially under stress. The body’s natural defenses become remarkably resistant to ills or infirmities. Under triton treatments, cancer invariably just goes away. It doesn't just go into remission--it disappears. Natural entropic processes, the cellular degeneration behind aging, can literally be reversed. Tissues respond to the presence of triton in the system by beginning to replace cells that no longer function perfectly. Vascular and neural systems become miraculously able to overcome trauma, healing or regenerating at rates that are almost visible as long as raw materials are present to sustain the phenomenal burn rates incurred under that kind of metabolic activity.

For businessmen, it’s an incredible advantage. For soldiers, it’s an inestimable advantage. For the rich, it’s virtual immortality. It is the fountain of youth. Only better.

Except triton treatments must be periodic. When the treatments cease, the benefits disappear. The brightness goes away.

There will never be enough to go around.

Triton has never been successfully synthesized. The only places triton has ever been discovered are the fresh meteorite impacts resulting from the cloud of rubble that began passing through our solar system, and Earth's path, in 2019. There’s one catch: Triton crystals, unprotected and unprocessed, deteriorate rapidly upon exposure to nitrogen. Unless they’re quickly buffered from the Earth's air, they sublimate to triton gas. Triton gas is worthless. No one has ever reversed the process and managed to recreate the pure crystals from a gaseous or liquid solution.

National assets originally designed for defense but now controlled by corporate hunger scan the skies, searching for meteors, tracking them against the odds they reach the ground. Several do each day, creating bloody free-for-alls by armed groups called Raider teams that descend on impact sites with the mission of securing the triton before it becomes worthless--and before someone else gets it. Nations ceased to complain to the international community about such incursions within three months of triton's discovery. There was no point. Nothing was going to stop those with the mean from risking everything to grab any triton that could be taken, no matter where in the world it lay. Most nations with the resources to do so have given up fighting the inevitable and joined in the fray themselves though any forces they deploy are usually under-equipped and under-trained compared to corporate-funded Raider teams.

Around the world, nations, conglomerates and the wealthiest of individuals staff ballistic staging bases. Raider teams live onsite, poised to react in moments to word of an impact. No sooner does a meteorite--a “snowball,” in contemporary slang--hit the ground then teams all over the world launch on ballistic recovery trips. Like human MIRVs, the men ride disposable delivery systems up to the edge of space and back, where rocket-braking slows the transports to the point where their passengers can be ejected. The team members free fall until low-altitude parachute deployment. On the ground a Raider team has two missions and one rule.

The missions:
1) Get to the impact site before anyone else, secure and protect the crystals.
2) Get to a pickup zone, PZ—the evacuation site—with the triton crystals, exit the free for all, and bring the crystals home.

The one rule:
1) If someone else accomplishes mission number one, get the crystals from them, using any means necessary, to prevent them from accomplishing mission number two.

The rewards involved have forced a rapid evolution in these Raider teams until the men and equipment are often the best to be found in the world. As always, talent goes where the money is. Few things drive the energy, the responsiveness, and the allocation of resources as the cry, “Raider Team: Snowball down!”

The "Raiders 2020" online game elevator pitch (it's a long elevator!)
Raiders 2020 is a multiplayer, real-time, tactical combat, role playing game set in an immersive environment and played from a 3d-isometric perspective. Requiring leadership, a cool head under fire, realistic squad-level tactics, long term squaddie and team-building strategies, diplomacy, and teamwork, Raiders is an open-ended, evolutionary leap in computer tactical simulations.

“Combat is like chess, except for the minor consideration that you can be killed…”

An excerpt from "Snowball Down!"
Your Raider team launches upon receiving word of a triton strike. There's great money in it for you, if you can keep it from being a one-way trip.

Squaddie Stats
Your Raider team squaddies are the foundation for your success or the roots of your failure. How do you shape them for success?

Tactics Primer
Environment and tactics in the Raiders 2020 computer game.

Copyright © 1997 - 2002 by Kevin L. Higgins