Battlefield™ 2042 News

[h2]PART 3: “COYOTE RUN” [/h2]
FEBRUARY 19TH, 2041
BRANI ISLAND, SINGAPORE

Even for those with nothing to lose, this was crazy.

After months of moving everything from processors to pork bellies, the latest cargo, 65 Australian refugees, added “Coyote” to this Task Force’s resumé. I held my breath when our next stop appeared through the mist...

It was pin drop silence as our ship passed through the Sea Wall protecting Brani Island, Singapore’s state of the art automated seaport. Rao’s wizardry may have gotten us convincing credentials for the scanners, but I knew if the famously brutal Singaporian Port Authority (SPA) got a whiff of this boat...

…It would get real loud, real fast.

Brani Island’s Sea Wall shielded it from the massive storms of the 30’s.

By the mid 30s, rising sea levels had decimated a third of all commercial ports around the world. In a deft response, Singapore built a revolutionary Sea Wall to defend its AI driven cargo distribution system, making Brani Island the central hub of global trade.

“The No-Pats’ problem is piss PR,” Specialist “Casper” Van Daele grumbles. “Singapore used to tolerate us. But it got messy when every terrorist and his mother started calling themselves No-Pats for some tea and sympathy. America was already afraid of losing control of this place, so they wielded all the bad press to force Singapore into shutting all No-Pats fleets out.”


The port is fully automated at Brani Island, but no system is invulnerable to hackers.


By some miracle, we dock undetected. Casper deploys an OV-P Recon Drone to make sure we’re clear as Rao ushers the refugees into a beat up shipping container that’s been outfitted with cots, a latrine and supplies to last them 10 days. Makes you wonder what’s in any of these containers.

The last refugee isn’t able to slip into the hiding spot before sirens erupt. Rangers (robotic quadrupeds with guns for brains) seemingly fall out of the sky, rushing towards our boat. Casper quickly snipes our mechanical assailants, as the Copperfield lurches out of the dock. Amazingly, Rao hacks into the automated distribution system on the island, dropping containers wherever he can to block our escape. It’s not enough.

The SPA pursues us into open waters. Gunfire. Screams. More gunfire. Silence. Then I hear an ear splitting cannon shot. My heart stops as I wait for impact, until I realize where the blast originated: a constellation of vessels on the horizon. A No-Pat fleet! Fishing trawlers, container ships, tug boats and more. There’s no telling how many are armed, and the SPA has no interest in finding out. They turn tail. It seems among the 1.2 billion displaced out in the world, this Task Force has at least a few friends.


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[h3]PART 2: “THE MAGIC ACT”[/h3] NOVEMBER 1ST, 2041
ALANG, INDIA

Be careful what you wish for…. Almost 2 months after fleeing Doha, Oz’s breadcrumbs led me to a safehouse made of shipping containers in India, filled with No-Pats armed to the teeth. Amongst them were a former intelligence officer, former doctor, nightclub bouncer, car mechanic... They all tried to hide that side of themselves, the former, but if you looked hard enough, you could find it in every tall tale and wry smile.

Navin Rao is what you call a people person.

As Specialist Navin Rao, a notorious Indian hacker and ex-MARCOS officer explained it to me, armed Task Forces cropped up in the 30s when moving cargo between the Non-Patriated around the globe became a lethal occupation. In response, world governments cracked down on all No-Pats, treating them as smugglers and pirates. To that, Rao can only shrug, “That’s why we always wear eye-patches when delivering food rations to stranded families… Who else is going to help No-Pats, if not other No-Pats?”

Was Rao’s spin the whole truth? There was only one way to find out. Of course, this Task Force seemed to be without one key ingredient -- a boat. The fact that we were in Alang, the largest ship breaking yard in the world, provided a clue...

This was going to be a heist.

Not every ship in Alang is destined for scrap.


Shipping is a simple business. More goods than ships, the price goes up. More ships than goods, the price goes down. In the late ‘30’s, in the wake of the Second Great Depression, the world had nothing to move. To prop up prices, the industry turned to ship breaking facilities like Alang to convert unused and weathered fleets back into high tensile steel. But soon, Alang became famous for something else: magic. How else could you explain whole freighters vanishing into thin air, only to be discovered months later amongst the ever growing No-Pat fleet?

It was the city’s worst kept secret. Corrupt businessmen were selling ships intended for scrap to No-Pats on the black market. But the Indian military would soon put a stop to it.

Navigating the Alang coast is treacherous business.

In the gail-force winds that night, the gunfire sounds like it’s coming from every direction. As the Indian Army pursues us, Rao brushes off a glancing wound and takes the helm, piloting us around the black iron corpses of ships that block our escape route.

It’s a feat that would have been spectacular on a clear day. But with 25 foot swells and the boat rocking like a sailor on shore leave, it’s sheer skill that shakes our pursuers in the graveyard of tankers.

By 1:32 AM GMT, the magic act is complete and we vanish across the 21st Parallel. Our beat up old container ship, unofficially dubbed “The Copperfield”, begins her journey as a No-Pat.


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“I thought I was an objective journalist, seeking to find out if No-Pats were the villains the world made them out to be. Little did I know that the answer would take me around the globe to places now engulfed by war. I set out to report their story, but it has become my own. This is our journey.”

-Kayvan Bechir
No-Pat Signal Corps

[h2]PART 1: “ESCAPE FROM DOHA”[/h2]
SEPTEMBER 12TH, 2041
DOHA, QATAR

It all began a year ago, surfing a darknet browser in my hometown of Doha - back when it was still inhabited by people. As a journalist I’d become keenly interested in the issue of armed No-Pats, trying to find a contact within the ranks of these stateless soldiers. Finally, at 3:28 AM, an anonymous source DM’d me, claiming to be the most wanted man alive - the commander of the largest contingent of No-Pat forces, known to the world simply as “Oz.”

I’d gotten such messages before, but it was never the real Oz. Some came from government agents waging anti-No-Pat campaigns and one guy had even accused me of being Oz, hiding in plain sight. But this was different, if for no other reason than the chat ended with me needing to flee the country as the Qatari Police broke down my door for aiding a terrorist.

It would be the only time in my life I ever welcomed an approaching sandstorm.

Opulent Doha was once hailed as the City of Quartz for her LED skyline.


By the ‘40’s, sand had become to Doha what water was to Venice. After years of fighting the encroaching desert, only those who couldn’t afford to leave remained under the massive LED skyline, still relentlessly promoting luxury handbags. Qatar had thrived in the 30’s, thanks to skyrocketing oil prices. The country invested heavily in combating desertification, hoping to copy Egypt’s success. For a time, it seemed we might tame nature. Then the oil ran out.

Famines, failed responses to them, and government protests all accompanied the sand monsoons. Soon there were military police everywhere, ready to arrest anyone that risked Qatar becoming the next non-patriated flash point.

My browser had the wrong search history.

I never thought I’d welcome an approaching sandstorm.

The sand storm’s cover is keeping me alive. Hiding from the armored vehicles hunting me down, I begin to notice anomalies in the LED adverts. Buried within the images is the unmistakable No-Pat emblem - a flag with a slash through it.

The breadcrumbs lead me to the catacombs under the abandoned football stadium. A fiftyish military man in Bermuda shorts whose relaxed demeanor is extremely off putting, points casually with his flashlight to a tunnel entrance - guarded by a mechanical sentry system. He puts out his hand. “Pyotr Guskovsky…” he grunts. Then, in perfect Arabic: “This was a one time thing.”

A crossed out flag - the unofficial sign of the No-Pats.


As I disappear into the dark while the wind howls overhead, I wonder if I’ll ever be able to call Doha home again. Little do I know that in less than a year later - Qatar would be a failed state, and the city of Doha, lost to sand.


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Battlefield 2042 will be playable for a limited selection of players over six sessions next week, according to invitation emails recently sent out by EA (via VGC)...
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