“Ugh… Fuck… Yeah… You like that?”
“Huh?… guh… yeah… just… don’t… oof… stop.”
Shaggy cringed at the sounds of sex coming from the van’s extensive audio system. They had finally gotten everything up and running. Then they had to point all the super-sensitive mics toward the right house. Which took a lot of trial and error. Eventually, they found one where a woman’s voice was shouting some rather explicit directions at a man named Drew. Thankfully, they weren’t getting any video though, for some reason, Slink seemed to still be looking for that function.
“We really don’t need to see this,” Shaggy said as he turned down the grunting voices.
“Come on, Shags. There are worse things on the Net. Besides, we need to verify it’s the right Drew.” Slink said as he toggled a few switches and hit a few different buttons.
The pale youth had the van’s manual in his lap and was continuously referring to it while they worked. The van seemed specifically designed for surveillance. It was even supposed to come with a full suite of drones and a few micro-bots. None of which they had been able to find. Shaggy couldn’t even get the holo-screens to work. Although, to be fair, he stopped looking when the sounds of coitus came bursting from the van’s speakers.
Shaggy grimaced as a particularly loud grunt emanated from the speakers. Followed by a responding grunt from the female participant. He wearily reached out to turn the volume up just in time to hear the woman’s voice say irately.
“Is that it?”
“Huh?” Drew’s voiced asked tiredly.
“You cannot be done already?!” the woman screeched.
“Geez, Melanie. I’m not a damn robot!”
“No. You’re a grown ass man who can’t handle a mature woman, it seems.”
“Mature. Right…” Drew trailed off, sounding increasingly annoyed.
“Fuck you, Spiegal. I don’t know how you talked me into your bed,” Melanie huffed.
Shaggy shook his head as the two adults bickered. Wasn’t exactly his idea of post-coitus conversation. Slink was now leaning under the massive bank of monitors and speakers. Looking for something. There was some noise and Shaggy was sure Slink had moved something under the desk when Melanie said something interesting.
“My husband could buy and sell your measly construction company a hundred times over!”
Shaggy heard Slink stop as Drew guffawed.
“But apparently he can’t take care of his wife like I can!”
Shaggy immediately glanced at Slink, who had dragged his head from under the desk. They stared at each other wide-eyed for a few seconds before Shaggy fell to his knees.
“We need the recon drone. Also, we need to get the screens on.”
“Definitely. That’s our fucking smoking gun.”
“Depends who her husband is. But if we can find out, we can really put the hurt on two-pump Drew.” Shaggy grinned as he dove under the desk and started moving cardboard boxes out of the way.
A good deal of the boxes seemed filled with bits of tech. Most of them were even labeled ‘junk’ or ‘recall.’ Shaggy grinned at what they could do with a van full of excess federal equipment. But he stayed goal oriented until, finally, they pulled a dusty old drone from under the monitor desk. Shaggy cheered as the sounds of Drew and Melanie making up filtered through the speakers. Nearby, Slink also gave a brief cheer as he pointed at one of the large legs of the desk.
“Got it!” Slink said as he dashed forward and Shaggy heard something click and the buzz of screens coming to life filled his ears.
Shaggy and Slink rose from under the desk to find multiple blue holo-screens come alive. Most of them were showing images of a squat, neo-modern house with lots of glass. A fit, tanned alien was standing on the balcony of the house smoking a cigarette and staring out at the other houses. Shaggy raised an eyebrow at the buff man pictured on all the screens and wondered if this was the now deceased agent’s target.
“Of course!” Slink shouted. “All the drones are currently watching Teo. That was their goal in the first place. So all we need to do is reorient them like we did the mics.”
“Except this time we’ll be able to see what the hell we are doing.” Shaggy muttered as he set down the foot and a half long drone he had grabbed from under the desk.
“Just give me a second.”
Shaggy grunted. “I don’t think we have a second. Our adulterous pair are about to split.”
It was true. The audio of Drew and Melanie was filled with the sounds of the impassioned pair saying goodbye to each other. It sounded like Melanie needed to get back home while Drew was going to go back to his office to do some work for his company. Shaggy could almost see the derisive face of Melanie as she quipped.
“You? Working? Come on, Drew. We both know what you’re really going to do the second I walk out the door.”
“Melanie, I am a serious business owner. I have my fingers in a lot of pies.”
“I am sure you do, Drew. But let’s be real. The only real bit of business you have ever done was sleep with me for the DAD contract. Let’s not pretend otherwise.”
“Oh, like you don’t enjoy it, baby.”
“You know I do, big man.” Melanie chuckled as the sounds kissing filled the speakers.
On the screens Slink was slowly moving the various drones over the other houses in Drew’s neighborhood. Shaggy grit his teeth as Slink maneuvered several drones at once. He sat down in the second chair and peered over the mini-screens he could see. Apparently there were also several mini-robots within Teo’s house and Slink hadn’t moved those yet.
Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
“You need a hand?” Shaggy asked as he tried to get a sense of the various keyboards and dials on the surveillance desk.
“No. I think I managed to slave all the drones to one controller. It just tricky to fly them. My dad bought me a few IRL. Though they weren’t as beefy as these.” Slink said as he carefully maneuvered the drones.
The kid was using a throttle and stick that had popped up from the desk. Looking at the screens, Shaggy thought he was doing a fairly good job. Six little screens zoomed the immaculately manicured lawns and past the heavily trimmed trees. Shaggy bit his lip as a thought hit him.
“Wait. Can they see the drones?”
Slink shook his head. “No. What we are seeing is a zoomed in perspective. The drones are actually pretty high in the air. Otherwise, I wouldn’t want to contend with all the trees and antennas these rich houses have.”
Shaggy nodded as he sat back and listened to Melanie's and Drew’s goodbyes. The pair seemed to despise each other, but for some reason, they were pretending they didn’t. Shaggy shook off the confusing relationship and just listened as Melanie finally left and Drew gave a rather sigh over the audio. Movement flickered on the drone’s screens just as the sound of a door closing hit the speakers.
Peeking over, Shaggy got a look of a rather tall woman with bone-white skin and rainbow colored hair. She was standing outside the door to the plantation-style mansion, reapplying something to her face. Shaggy shared a look with Slink, and the boy nodded. They had found their target. There was a loud clicking noise as Slink pressed a button on his stick and Shaggy heard a whirring noise from beside him. The desk was printing out a picture Slink had just taken of the woman.
“For later.” Slink said.
Shaggy nodded as he watched the woman move down the house’s driveway and toward a red hover car. She got in the back and, after a few minutes, the car’s auto-drive feature launched the vehicle up and away from the house. Shaggy tried to reorient the mics during that time, but no sound was escaping the car. Obviously, the woman had better security in her car than Drew had in his house. Although Slink managed to get an image of her car. Shaggy grinned and reoriented the cameras back toward Drew Spiegal’s house. He was just in time to hear a loud noise.
“SNORT… Ahhhhh. Fucking bitch.” Drew muttered, sniffing and snorting.
Shaggy looked over to Slink, but the boy was busy rapidly getting the drones in place. Once he had one locked into position, he would be to the next. Slowly, he built a wide camera net over the entire house. Once he was done, Slink hit various buttons on the console while occasionally looking down at the manual in his lap.
“Anything I can do to help, kid?” Shaggy asked, feeling a little useless.
Slink looked up, startled for a few seconds before he seemed to think about it. “Oh, yeah. Find the yellow dial and a blue switch and turn them on. That should give us an image of the inside of the house.”
“Like a heat map?”
“No. A literal live image. We’ll be able to see in real time. Just be careful with the dial. If you push it too far, we’ll be looking at Drew’s bones.”
Shaggy nodded and went on a small hunt for the switches. He found them buried behind a small holo-screen showing Teo Santos’ kitchen. He flipped the blue switch slowly started spinning the dial as he watched the screens. The white mansion seemed to bleed away as the image show the stonework underneath, then the woodwork, and then the inside of the house. It was like some kind of X-ray vision they could control. Shaggy grinned as Slink brought a drone around the building searching for Drew.
They found him on the second story in a small office surrounded by books and trophies. However, Drew’s focus was on a small pile of purple dust laying on the desk. Audio had been playing this entire time, but now they got to watch Drew duck his head into the dust and take a large sniff. The cameras on the drones were pretty decent, too. They could see the dilation in Drew’s eyes as he popped his head back up and coughed.
“Dude is blitzed out of his mind.” Shaggy muttered.
Being able to see Drew this close made him watch the volume of his voice. Like somehow Drew would hear them. Slink, however, had no such compunction. The young man grunted disapprovingly.
“Man’s entire business is cleaning up the city, and he is here getting high.”
Shaggy chuckled. “Heh! You know many people would say that’s the dream. He does nothing and his thousands of workers make him richer.”
Slink simply grumbled as Drew took another hit of dust and then sat back in his chair, grumbling. Shaggy shook his head and then glanced at the other screens. They had multiple angles on the house. All showing an x-ray view of the insides. Shaggy was surprised to see that Drew was alone. No housekeeper, no guards. He went to point it out to Slink when Drew suddenly moved.
The stocky man practically leapt from his office chair and ran to the door. Then Drew stopped and turned around, rushing back to his desk. He pushed some papers out of the way until he found a flat disc and started yelling into it.
“Hey! Guards! The people are back. Back in my house! You need to come catch them! They are going to touch my art!”
There was a brief pause and Slink and Shaggy looked at each other worriedly. But soon the flat disc came to life and an image of a person came to life over the flat disc.
“Sir. We are not showing signs of anyone in your domicile. Mr. Spiegal, as we have informed you, your security is state-of-art. No one has broken in. You are perfectly safe.”
“FUCK YOU! I am perfectly safe! They’re here, I tell you! Inside the walls! They want my goodies!” Drew screamed back, shaking the communication device.
Shaggy had to stifle a laugh as the guard continued to try to talk down the paranoid business man. Slink watched the communication with rapt attention, however. He even moved a few drones to look down at the road. Waiting to see if any guards showed up. No one did and eventually Drew yelled himself out. Once he had pulled a promise to check the premises from the guard, Drew went back to his desk, took another hit, and then passed out. The sounds of loud snoring echoed through the vehicle.
“Well, that was entertaining at least,” Shaggy grinned.
“And Informative. Now we know no one will believe Drew if someone breaks into his house.”
“Yeah, probably cried wolf one too many times.”
Slink grinned at him until Shaggy picked up on his unintentional joke. Shaking his head, he took a peek at the other cameras and found that Teo was now cooking something in his kitchen while talking on his phone. Shaggy tried to find an audio switch for the mini-robots, but he couldn’t until Slink pointed out another switch. Flicking it, a heavily accented voice filled the car as food sizzled on the stove.
“No, I want some of the crew brought up here. I have my people, but I need grunts. Austin is ripe for the picking. With the City in shambles and HLO placating the Supes, we have a way into the local underground.”
There was a muffled voice over the other end of the line. Obviously, Teo was using a more traditional phone. Probably so he wouldn’t be overheard. Teo sat his spatula down on the counter and laughed and whatever was said.
“HAHAHA! Please. The Super-Villains out here are a joke. Besides, we won’t be doing that kinda of grandstanding, anyway. Just get some of our boys on the bullet and I’ll take care of the rest.”
There was another pause as Teo picked up his spatula again.
“Qué dijo? What? Feds? Don’t worry about it. They got nothing on me. Just send the guys.”
With that, Teo sat his phone down and went about making his food. Shaggy nodded as he switched the audio back to Drew. It looked like Teo Santos and his crew were about to come crashing into Austin.
“Well, if we needed another reason to hit this guy, there it is.” Shaggy grinned.
Slink turned the page on the van’s manual as he nodded. “Yeah, but now we have a deadline.”
Shaggy nodded and checked the time on the consoles readout. It was just past two in the afternoon. They could probably call it a day and go tell the others what they learned. When he said as much to Slink, the boy nodded but didn’t move. He seemed to be in deep thought and Shaggy let the kid collect himself.
“I think we should put the photo of Melanie coming out of Drew’s house out on the net. Then tomorrow evening, we can bring the others and invade both Teo’s place and Drew’s. Drew’s first probably, because that will be easier, I think.”
“Okay. Why?”
Slink waved a hand at the screens. Most of which showed an unconscious Drew snoring into his desk. The others showed a mild-mannered crime lord, eating a late lunch.
“Drew is already a paranoid wreck. So once we release the photo, he’ll lose his shit. My hope is he’ll try to consolidate whatever evidence of his misdoings he has. Making it easier for us to grab.”
“Got it.”
“Then we hit Teo. That one is going to be more shock and awe. We hit him hard and fast, take what we can, then bolt out of there.”
Shaggy nodded happily. “Sounds like my kind of party. Now all we have to do is get this van back to the guys and tell them the plan.”
Slink lifted the giant manual. “You drive. I’m going to read more of this. Maybe there’s a feature on the drones or bots that’ll help us.”
Shaggy nodded as he moved toward the van door. He swung it open as the Texas heat hit him again. He groaned as he stretched his legs and moved to the driver’s seat. Shaggy put the keys in the ignition and checked that the nearby sky-lanes were clear. He was a little hesitant to use the fed’s interference device. But he figured it could be a last resort. For now, he set the large repulsors under the van to medium output and got ready to take off. Squinting against the sun, Shaggy took them out and over the Barton Creek Estates, angling for the nearest sky-lane. He grinned at what tomorrow would bring and pushed more speed into the hover-van, zooming back toward their friends.