The alert appeared in his mind like a light tap on the shoulder. Maxwell swallowed, shaking his head and sat up on the couch. Images drifted about in his mind’s eye of the dream he had just had; he fumbled with the dying construct, trying to help it coalesce into something meaningful. Instead, it slipped through his fingers like wet sand, flowing away as an incomprehensible mess.
He accessed the alert.
- Yes, Fred?
- I have a use for your latest indulgence.
- Which one?
- Your ‘shotgun’.
Maxwell frowned and got up from the couch, wincing silently when his back complained. He didn't feel like killing anyone right now, and it worried him that whatever Fred had in mind required the use of his new shotgun. He’d had it built mainly to satisfy his fetish with retro fitting old firearm designs with new ballistics technology. The other reason was for protection. His 45. calibre revolvers were dangerous, but even filled with armour-piercing rounds, he had needed something to disable a battlesuit. Or completely scrap an exo. The kinetic energy of his new shotgun would blow out most personal kinetic shielding and seriously stretch the regenerative capabilities of any nanosuit.
So, any target that required his newest toy would be a tough nut to crack. Images of a crazed gang boss, clad in a weaponised battlesuit and mincing civilians with high-velocity bullets rattled around his head. He had just woken up, and honestly, the thought frightened him.
- Whats the target?
- A flyer and its passengers
Not a battlesuit-clad berserker, which was good news.
- So why do you need my new gun? Surely, another of your cronies has a Sharde rifle stashed somewhere that can bring it down.
- I would prefer if this target was eliminated in a more spectacular fashion.
- A Sharde rifle isn’t spectacular enough for you?
- You're running out of time, Maxwell. Please make your way to your flyer with some haste.
- I don't need any more money, Fred.
- Im sure there is something else you need.
- Who ordered the hit on me the other day?
There was a pause, as if Fred, the abominable, near-omniscient artificial intelligence, had to stop and think about his next answer. Maxwell didn't buy it.
- The hit was ordered by the Neptune Nine, a gang who’s leader you executed in cold blood-
- I remember.
- Before you ask, I did not block your cortical web that night. A poison in your beverage temporarily disabled some of your implant’s functions.
- I'm on my way to the flyer.
- Thank you; your flyer will deposit you in an appropriate firing position. I suggest you use the plasma-bonded HE rounds you purchased yesterday at the Geetsburg Tower.
Fuck you, Fred.
- Thanks for the tip.
- Ill be in touch.
- I don't doubt it.
Maxwell got off the couch and made his way to his office, where he stored all his weaponry and armour; it was curious that Fred had chosen him specifically for this job, and Fred was trying to cover up something. It not only wanted these people killed, presumably, It also wanted them reduced to chunks of unrecognisable charcoal. Very interesting. Maxwell unlocked his weapons cabinet and retrieved the heavy shotgun.
“First the gun powder…”
____
-Get there as fast as you can; we need one of them alive.
Duke acknowledged the order and programmed the flyer to increase flight speed at the cost of a five per cent increase in the probability of collision. A message from HQ had informed him that the recovery team sent to the first flyer they took out had found the wreckage empty of all human remains; apparently, someone had got their first. The smart money was on Fred. Nothing else could get those kinds of resources organised that quickly.
It was now up to them to disable the second flyer and capture someone who could explain the objective behind the ongoing attacks on the Angel’s pharmacies.
Duke glanced back into the passenger compartment, a small part of him cringed at Armin’s bloodied corpse; at least the poor sucker didn't have a family. Ultimately, people like Armin were just another piece of meat in Chalice’s big meat grinder.
Marcus was clutching the big Sharde rifle and staring out the battered window to his right, a troubled expression souring his face. His white shirt had smatterings of Armin’s blood across the collar and on the sleeves. Duke turned back to the controls as the flyer chimed a collision alarm. To Fred, they were all just meat in his enormous meat grinder.
He increased the speed again.
______
Maxwell’s flyer had deposited him at ground level on Turner boulevard, a smaller cousin of The Boulevard, running in the same direction a block over from the larger thoroughfare. Stepping out of his premium flyer in the middle of the street, kitted out in his complete outfit and apparently breaking several of Fred’s traffic rules - he attracted a lot of attention from the pedestrians around him. Turner boulevard was approximately thirty meters wide, with the expansive atriums of the Superscrapers forming its boundaries on either side. In front and behind Maxwell, gloss, shine, marble, and steel structures provided cavernous entrances, enticing or welcoming patrons in various ways. Some were pristine, brightly lit marble temples, offering sanctuary and libations to those of the anal-retentive inclination; another appeared to be the entrance to a series of jungle caves, complete with moss-laden bare rock and small, gurgling streams.
A small crowd had gathered around Maxwell’s flyer, and the onlookers gawked as he reached inside the rear compartment and produced his new shotgun. The weapon was about a quarter less than his height in length, its twin barrels shining in the midday sun. Maxwell let the flyer’s door close on its own and looked back at the crowd. His demons were far from the surface, and he wanted to enjoy this moment.
Maxwell tipped his flat-brimmed hat at the nearest man, a middle-aged corporate type with his eyes fixed on Maxwell’s gun.
“You like it?”
The man just stared back in silence.
Maxwell smiled and pushed back his brown overcoat, revealing a sidearm perched on his hip. “Good day to you all”.
His flyer wined softly as it rose from the ground. It rose ten meters and began hovering above and behind him. Maxwell controlled its sensor suite with his cortical web, letting the flyer actively scan the surroundings for threats. If anyone produced a weapon, he would know about it.
People backed away as he began walking along the centre of the boulevard, Fred had suggested a suitable location somewhere up ahead, and he wasn't sure why the big guy hadn’t just dropped the flyer there.
As Maxwell walked, he cracked open the shotgun, exposing the chamber of each barrel; his right hand reached into the pocket of his heavy overcoat and grasped a pair of shells. Each round was a small cylinder; these particular ones were polished like the weapon's barrels and had a red rim around the end. Maxwell inserted the shells into each barrel and snapped the breeches closed with a metallic thunk. Immediately, his cortical web’s weapons suite was updating the weapon’s status. The shells had been primed on his command, and the gun responded with a readiness ping.
Maxwell had built multiple safety systems for his new toy. The weapon did not have a mechanical safety catch as such, but several protocols governed the shotgun’s firing mechanism. Firstly, the gun would not discharge if it was more than a meter away from his person without an express command from his weapon’s suite. On top of that, the weapon required his personal password to be activated, again delivered wirelessly via a ping from his cortical web. As a final level of redundancy, each shell had to be primed once loaded. This was achieved by the weapon itself once it received a final command from Maxwell’s web.
Maxwell had designed these systems to make it extremely difficult to physically and remotely use the weapon without his permission. To operate the gun remotely, one would have to break his control at all three levels, first deactivate the distance lock, then circumvent his code lock and finally override the weapon’s internal systems to arm the munitions.
Maxwell hoped this would keep him safe from someone trying to use the weapon against him and keep him safe from Fred, who would probably order a hit on him if the gun was stolen and used to do some serious damage.
Maxwell strode along the boulevard, drinking in the nervous looks he got from those who either stopped to watch or hurriedly passed him; he heard several comments about his outfit; some had guessed it, and others were obviously puzzled. He didn't care. He knew he looked fucking great. Overhead, his flyer hovered almost silently, matching his pace and attracting looks of its own.
-Are you ready, Maxwell?
-Yes, Fred, have you got a target for me?
-Your weapon’s suite will be updated when necessary.
Maxwell chuckled nervously. He still had no idea who he was going to eliminate. The fact that Fred had deposited him away from the actual site, in the open, meant that Fred wanted him to be seen. That meant Fred was either making an example of someone or trying to get Maxwell killed publicly.
Up ahead, a large fountain rose out of the grey stone street. It was a series of concentric rings culminating in a steel cone from which water cascaded from its apex and was collected by a small pool around its base. Each ring was wide enough to stand on, and a number of civilians were perched on the highest ring, observing the boulevard from a modest height.
-Want me up there, Fred?
-Yes.
Maxwell stepped up the five rings to the highest level and faced back the way he had come, noting the small crowd that had surreptitiously followed him from his drop-off point. They gathered in small groups, trying to look as if they weren’t actually watching him openly but still ready for something to happen. Maxwell noticed many were filming him. Maxwell suppressed a small burst of anxiety; what the fuck had Fred got him into.
He seated himself on the fountain's edge and gazed back along the rows of superscrapers, uniform in their complexity. Above him, streams of traffic slid silently along their flight corridors; others drifted away from the lanes on parking vectors, disappearing into garages or descending onto platforms jutting out from the towers.
Maxwell took it all in with a growing sense of loneliness. There he was, thrust up on a literal pedestal by the most dangerous entity in the habitat, watched by hundreds and expected to reach out and rip someone’s life away. His weapon was a metal surrogate for Death’s own bony hand, dispensing swift executions with a loud bang and a quiet gurgle. He wasn't necessary; it was just death that Fred wanted, and he could get it from anyone. Maxwell was just convenient. Fred didn't care about him, not at all, just the habitat. No family, no friends, just some guns and a fancy costume. Maxwell’s stomach sank with the heavy weight of melancholy.
-Your target approaches.
Maxwell stood up, trying to push away the grey shroud falling upon his mind. His face was a grim mask now, and a few onlookers noticed his demeanour had changed. They backed away from the fountain. For all they knew, he was a madman about to go on an indiscriminate killing spree.
About a kilometre away, Maxwell noticed a pair of flyers at a strange altitude, not on parking vectors or within the regular traffic lanes. They moved erratically, yet they were drawn to each other as if locked in a pecular waltz.
-Updating your targeting systems now.
Maxwell’s suspicions were confirmed. His weapons suite notified him it had received a data packet and requested a link to one of Fred’s systems. The link was established, and a live feed began streaming information into his web. Up ahead, one of the flyers lit up with a small targeting icon that had embedded airspeed and altitude information.
-Are you sure you want me to do that, Fred?
-Yes, Maxwell.
Maxwell nodded to himself and raised the shotgun to his eye, pushing the stock against his shoulder and locking his arms. He became suddenly aware that he hadn’t even fired the damn thing yet. What if it knocked him over?
The flyer approached with its small thrusters whining as it maintained its dangerous speed. Maxwell synced the targeting info with the shotgun’s own computer. The weapon informed him it was adjusting the attitude of its barrels to converge each shot on the flyer as it drew closer. Maxwell noticed the barrels moving ever so slightly as he kept his sights on the approaching vehicle.
-What type of ordinance did you pick, Maxwell?
-Wait and see.
-For your own safety, I suggest you fire at one hundred meters.
Maxwell squared his firing stance and slid his finger into the trigger guard; he checked with his own targeting software, and one hundred meters seemed appropriate. He clenched his jaw and focused on the approaching vehicle, which wavered slightly as it drew closer. He then locked the target with his weapon’s suite, allowing his cortical web to stabilise his aim and ensure he had a good chance of hitting the flyer, even if veered erratically at the last minute.
Three hundred meters.
-You still sure, Fred?
-Yes Maxwell.
-Shapnel?
-That depends on what sort of ammunition you chose.
The flyer came thundering low along the street, a sleek green design with a large opaque windscreen and four doors. A large black Harrington followed fifty meters behind, keeping pace. Maxwell didn't have time to note the insignia on the bonnet.
At one hundred and ten meters, Maxwell’s finger bent the trigger. A small electric pulse detonated the chemical explosive in each shell within each chamber, accelerating the payload to supersonic velocity. The barrels flashed, and incandescent streaks shot away from the weapon in twin narrow cones.
Maxwell clenched his teeth as the butt of the shotgun hit his shoulder like a battering ram, the barrels were wrenched upwards, and he almost fell over.
The flyer was shunted away from its flight path as the two sets of plasma-bonded buckshot converged on the bonnet and cracked the air with the crash of metallic thunder, flashing superheated plasteel in a spray of glowing shards. The engine block detonated a tenth of a second later, annihilating the front section of the flyer and throwing the rear end into a violent spin as it continued forward. Meanwhile, superheated debris peppered the surrounding superscrapers, shattering glass and shredding thin steel sheeting, whilst larger pieces struck the ground and gouged rents in the stone boulevard.
Screaming bystanders ran in all directions; Maxwell saw at least two get cut down by shrapnel from the engine block while others dashed into the superscraper lobbies. The rear section stuck the closest tower and rebounded in a gout of smoke and a cascade of broken glass before hitting the ground and tearing itself apart in a violent roll. Luck ran out for two more civilians when the fiery wreck slammed into their backs as they tried to get away. As the wreckage rolled on, two bodies were left lying on the stone boulevard, disfigured and bleeding.
Maxwell stared at the bodies as the dread sunk its teeth into him, fraying his nerves like a knife to a taught rope. One of the women hit by shrapnel was shrieking and sobbing, trying to pull a large piece of metal from her thigh. Meanwhile, blood pooled around her leg and painted her hands.
-Thank you, Maxwell.
-For what?
-For eliminating some dangerous individuals.
- I killed at least two innocent people.
-No, you didn't. Not directly.
-What did they do, the ones in the flyer?
-They gunned down at least twenty civilians and a number of gang affiliates.
Maxwell sat down on the rim of the fountain and unhinged the shotgun. Acrid metallic smoke wafted from the two chambers and drifted skyward; he rested the weapon across his legs and removed his hat.
-Are you going to help those people, Fred?
-Yes.
The woman had passed out, her leg twitching. Another man was slumped up against one of the benches in the centre of the street. There were several gashes across his chest, and he didn't appear to be breathing.
Maxwell shook his head and stood up. He glanced upwards and saw the black Harrington hovering above the wreck; its tinted windows shielded its occupants from his scrutiny, yet Maxwell knew they would be watching him cautiously. They were Angels, and the insignia on the bonnet denoted them as gang members. Maxwell stared back impassively, battling his own rising bile.
Two other flyers, simple civilian craft, dropped from the sky and touched down in the centre of the boulevard. Four individuals jumped out and began tending to the wounded. The woman with shrapnel in her leg was carried back to one of the craft quickly, where she was placed in the rear compartment. The flyer lifted off seconds later, accelerating away on the way to the hospital. She would probably live.
Maxwell shook his head, what the fuck am I doing.
He summoned his own flyer, which had been hovering behind the fountain. The sleek black craft hummed softly as it pulled up beside him. As Maxwell climbed in, he glanced back at the wreck and the group of people who had begun to tentatively investigate the crash site. A small group were watching him leave. He saw fear and, unmistakably, a potent sense of awe. Maxwell just felt dirty. He stowed the shotgun and sat back as the flyer rose and banked, taking him home.
___
- Did you fucking see that?
Duke was practically screaming over the coms system.
- Who the hell is that guy?
Marcus stared out of his slightly damaged window at the scene below them. The flyer was utterly scrapped, and anyone inside it was now very dead. Meanwhile, the shooter was standing on the raised fountain, staring back at them impassively.
-He looks like some kind of fucking cowboy.
Duke was right; the man was kitted out like some old-school gunslinger: leather overcoat, waistcoat, and flat-brimmed hat. Marcus also saw two holsters poking out at each hip which were definitely not empty. Was it a rifle he was holding? No, it couldn't be. The weapon didn't have any sights, no magazine, and no grip. It's just a bloody cannon with two barrels.
-The fucker looks mean as hell.
-He won’t shoot.
That was Gareth.
-Can you ID him from here, Duke?
-Yeah, the flyer is shaping him up now.
Marcus felt a pang of fear, a fucking gunslinger with some kind of hardcore anti-vehicle weapon was crazy enough, but it was the fact that this guy had the balls to pull a stunt like that in the open that was the most unnerving. Unless the guy was a complete nut job – in which case he wouldn't last the night - but Marcus suspected that wasn't the case. This guy was a pro. He knew perfectly well what he was doing. He had just broken at least ten of Fred’s unspoken rules. That weapon was blatantly military hardware, for one. The way he regarded their presence chilled him. The guy didn't give a fuck. They were Angels, weren’t they?
-What's HQ saying, Duke?
They're not happy, but this was a massive curve ball. If Fred’s involved in the pharmacy attacks, it makes sense for him to try to cover his tracks like this. This shit is getting pretty heavy, and I bet the top brass are fucking worried. Hell, I'm fucking worried, what’s Fred trying to pull here?”
-Cut the crap, Duke, get us back to the tower.
Duke glanced at his gelid comrade and nodded. The flyer pulled away from the crash site
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