Salzwedel laughs cruelly at our collectively shocked expressions. Though the holographic avatar has a slight digital filter, reminding us he isn’t here physically, the sound of his laugh is perfectly clear.
“I must confess, I was actually rather surprised when I realized you had taken the bait I left out for you. An auction, selling off my most prized possessions, in order to pay off my debts? How laughable. I manufacture warships for the Imperial Navy. If I truly was in debt, the Emperor would wipe it away with a stroke of his pen.”
A setup. This entire heist was a setup. We walked straight into a trap. It’s a brute fact, bouncing around the inside of my skull, making me feel like more of a fool with every passing second.
“You mean this whole thing was a setup?” the Recluse asks, proving himself the only one of us incapable of not stating the obvious.
“Quite so, my musclebound friend,” Salzwedel laughs. “You are no doubt wondering why I would deliberately seek to have my home ransacked, and my most valuable trophy stolen. The answer is quite simple. Priceless and unique though it may be, that weapon is little better than a paperweight in my hands. It has been in my possession for no less than four decades now, and not once have I been able to so much as pull the trigger. Not once.”
Frustration seeps into his tone, twisting his features for a moment. He’s well-dressed, a full suit and tie, with his hands behind his back, almost statue-like in his stillness, save for his face. I’ve got no idea where he could be speaking from. Nowhere near here, surely.
“You, Mister Genov, are the only person in the entire Imperium capable of changing that.”
Though we’re all wearing FalseFace implants that make us appear as different people, he can tell which one of us is Niko, because the Regalia in his hands is activated. At the very least, the rest of our identities should still be safe.
“Your Noble cognitive pattern is what unlocks the weapon, meaning it will only function in your hands. But it is not your hands that make it function. It’s your brain.”
While Salzwedel is speaking, Saffi glances to the left and right, and, seeing no impediments to our egress, starts in the direction of the teleportal hub.
“Fuck this supervillain monologue bullshit, I’m out.”
“I would not recommend that course of action,” Salzwedel advises calmly.
The holographic Salzwedel snaps his fingers. Seconds later, dozens of soldiers, wearing not the green-gray SecuriCorp uniform, but a bright yellow one, pour into the hallway on both sides. All of them have weapons primed and pointed at us.
“As I was saying,” he continues, while Saffi and I both draw our own weapons, pointing them at the soldiers on either side. Kind of a pointless gesture, but it does make me feel a bit better. “For the past several years, a group of researchers in my employ have been busy developing a machine capable of harvesting your cognitive pattern, and using it to fool the Regalia into believing that you are the one wielding it.”
Niko stiffens, and behind us, I hear the Recluse gasp.
“All the machine now requires is your brain. It will be carefully preserved, self-termination function suppressed. Your disappearance will be written off as yet another failure of the Stormwolf line, and the power of the Hurricane Howl... will be mine.”
This time, Niko snarls, and levels the machine gun at the hologram, which only makes Salzwedel laugh.
“My soldiers are under orders to capture you alive, of course. Sadly, your associates will need to be terminated. Mindkiller is difficult and expensive to acquire, but as you all have seen, I am a man of great resources.”
Just like that, the stakes are even higher. He can’t risk us exposing his scheme, or coming after him for revenge, so truedeath is his only option.
Placing a hand on Niko’s shoulder, I draw him back. He’s breathing heavily, clearly furious, but now isn’t the time for uncontrolled anger. Not yet.
“You would be the mastermind?” Salzwedel asks, amused. “The Stormwolf line is hardly known for its intelligence, so I suppose it stands to reason there would be a power behind the proverbial throne.”
“Something like that,” I reply, keenly aware that I no longer have a plan of any kind. For a lot of Nobles, that realization would mean it’s time to surrender. But I’m more than willing to improvise.
“Well? Have you anything to say? Perhaps you intend to reveal that this was all somehow a part of your plan?” He pauses, mirthful. “No? I suppose real-life heists rarely play out as they do in fiction.”
“You’re right. I didn’t plan for any of this. But that’s just gonna make it all the more embarrassing when I win anyway.”
A number of things happen in short order after that. The first is that my tail snaps out from underneath my clothes, with a small object held between the pincer-like segments of the barbed tip. It’s a smoke pellet, which, when it hits the ground in front of us, explodes into a thick cloud, obscuring sight-lines for the soldiers surrounding us.
Next, Saffi tosses me and Niko our thermal imaging goggles, which all three of us quickly strap on, giving us the advantage against the soldiers, who have no such equipment of their own. Probably weren’t expecting they’d need it, considering this was supposed to be as simple as springing a trap on us. Their mistake.
Next, the Recluse takes three steps back, through the doorway to Salzwedel’s high-security sub-level. The door slams shut in front of him, sealing itself thanks to his control of the security system. He really did subvert all of those systems, meaning that despite the fact that Salzwedel engineered this entire situation, he still has limited control of the house’s facilities itself. Behind that door, he- and more importantly, our loot -should be safe until the shooting is over.
We aren’t all acting independently, of course. I gave everybody their orders over the brainband, while Salzwedel was monologuing. And one of us still has a role to play.
Besides the soldiers and the three of us, there’s another heat signature nearby. Two, really. The twin storms that serve as the Hurricane Howl’s source of ‘ammunition.’ When I first strap the goggles on, they’re faint, but while I watch, they begin to warm up, and the scent of ozone permeates the air.
“What are you waiting for, fools? Shoot!”
Salzwedel’s shrill command comes a moment before the soldiers do as instructed, opening fire on our position. What they’re firing, however, are rubber bullets. He needs Niko alive for his sick scheme to work, not to mention the rest of us, because if we die the normal way before he can truekill us with Mindkiller, we’ll expose his plan. So they’re hamstrung, using non-lethal ammo against a trio of targets all wearing body armor, thanks to the SecuriCorp uniforms we ‘borrowed’ on our way in here.
That doesn’t mean we’re completely safe, of course. If they hit us in the head, we’re down for the count, and taking a body shot still won’t be pleasant. But they aren’t the only ones firing. The air crackles, and I hear the sound of thunder, close by, yet somehow distant, as the Hurricane Howl begins to fire.
In thermal vision, it looks incredible. Bolts of white-hot lightning rip outwards from the machine gun’s barrel, and tear through the ranks of the soldiers on the right side of the hallway. Each bolt is powerful enough to kill a man in an instant, but that’s not all- the lightning jumps from man to man, arcing between their weapons and gear, all of which serves as lightning rods to the supercharged weapon. Within seconds, all of them are smoking corpses, the stench of burning hair practically choking us.
We waste no time in fleeing from the remaining soldiers, Niko firing off a few shots in their general direction to slow them down. Carrying the bulky gun slows him down a little, but they’re in no hurry to follow after seeing the rest of their squad get massacred like that.
All three of us breathing heavily, we dash down the hall, until I spot a doorway I remember from watching the spy-fly footage of this place to prepare for the heist. Even in the midst of the fight, I can’t help but feel angry with myself at having gotten so completely suckered by Salzwedel’s scheme, but there’s no time to beat myself up about that now. Recriminations can come later.
Fucking hell, that was close, Saffi says, as we duck into Salzwedel’s sitting room. The jewel-encrusted globe showing the oceans and continents of Earth rests in the center, but I ignore it, instead taking cover behind a couch to catch my breath.
Not out of the woods yet, I warn her, peering over the sofa to check the doorway.
“You think you’ve escaped?” Salzwedel roars over the house’s PA system. “None of you are leaving this place alive!”
That would seem to run counter to his previously established plan to keep Niko alive indefinitely as a brain in a jar, but I don’t think he’s quite thinking straight at the moment.
Case in point:
I’m going to track him down and force-feed him his own testicles, Niko hisses.
Fully on board with that plan, but let’s focus on getting out of here first.
After a moment, he signals his wordless assent, apparently too infuriated to form any complete sentences that aren’t about how he plans to enact his revenge upon his would-be captor.
Okay, let’s take stock then. First off, nobody’s seriously hurt, right? I know it was pretty hairy for a second there.
One of ‘em clipped me, but I’m all good, Saffi replies. Assholes can’t shoot for shit.
For real. Guess he must have cheaped out on mercs. Speaking of- I’m estimating maybe twenty guys left, assuming Salz isn’t busy calling in reinforcements right now.
Make that eighteen.
I don’t bother suggesting that Saffi might not have killed the two people she shot at before we left. It would be an insult to her abilities.
Copy that. My guess is they’re regrouping right now, so we have a little time to prepare. Low-rent guns for hire or not, they won’t be stupid enough to all run at us together, so we can’t just rely on Niko gunning them down like before.
His response comes in the form of a low grunt.
Hold on, Saffi interjects. We can’t just wait here for them to come to us. Even if he didn’t have anybody on standby, that asshole can still just call up Mercs-R-Us and have them ship in twice as many people whenever he wants. We gotta take control of the ‘portal hub, or we’re fucked.
The sagacity of her insight makes me pause for a moment, feeling deeply foolish for the second time today.
You’re absolutely correct. In fact, I think I’ve pretty much voided any right to be giving orders today. The wheel’s yours.
Saffi shoots me a sideways glance from her hiding spot not far from where I’m crouched down, like she’s trying to figure out if this is some kind of trick or test I’m pulling.
…okay, sure. Why not? Let’s put those goggles back on and go hunting.
Of course- the thermal goggles will let us see the enemy through the house’s walls, giving us the advantage as we search them out.
It might be prudent to split up, I suggest, trying not to slip into ‘commander voice.’ They need to take all three of us alive, after all. And if they do take you down, try to pull your plug before they can stun you or something.
Good call. Let’s hit it.
Pulling the thermal goggles back down over my eyes, I peer up over the sofa, sweeping the room with my sidearm as I do so. Several heat signatures show up in the distance as I do so, giving me some idea of where the remaining mercenaries are located. It doesn’t hurt that I have the house’s layout ‘saved’ in my memory, accessible at any time, meaning I know more than just the general locations of the mercs, I know which rooms they’re in specifically.
Flicking Niko and Saffi that information, I have to keep myself from immediately handing out orders, still my first instinct, and instead wait for Saffi to issue a command.
Seems like most of them are in the kitchen. Pup, you good to handle them on your own?
His laconic reply is Yes.
Thought you’d say that, she smirks. It looks like some stragglers split off and headed up to the second floor. They’re all yours, Princess.
Part of me wants to complain about being given the easier job, but Niko is the one with the Regalia. Plus, I did just abdicate my role as leader of this little operation, so I’ve got no right to second-guess Saffi.
Sounds good. And you?
Gonna secure the ‘portal room, hit the emergency shutdown to make sure he can’t bring anybody else in. Now get moving, we don’t have all day.
With a nod in her direction, I smack the side of my sidearm and step out fully from behind cover, following Saffi and Niko out of the sitting room. I do spare one last look at the jewel-encrusted globe before we leave, still a bit disappointed we can’t take it with us. I wouldn’t even want to sell it, just put it on display in my own apartment back on the Citadel.
The three of us split off quickly, and I head for the nearest staircase, keeping close to the wall and making sure to make as little noise as possible while I walk. The handful of heat signs on the second floor aren’t stationary, and I can’t keep all of them within my field of vision at once, so if I get sloppy, it’s very possible one of them might manage to sneak up on me.
Right now, though, I’m trying to sneak up on one of them. There’s a heat signature nearby, moving cautiously down an adjacent hallway with a weapon raised. Fortunately, he’s facing away from me, so this should be a layup- except for the fact that shooting him in the back would instantly alert every other person in the building to my exact location. So instead, as. prepare to round the corner that’ll give me line of sight on him, I use my tail to pluck a lightweight throwing knife from my belt.
With the tip of the blade held in the pincer-grip of my tail’s barb, I turn the corner and set my sights on the mercenary. A brief, idle brainband search informs me that they’re part of a group called the Yellowjackets, which explains their brightly-colored uniforms. Presumably they don’t wear those into hot zones most of the time. Just more proof they weren’t remotely prepared for dealing with us.
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More evidence for that is the fact that their uniforms lack any kind of protection for the wearer’s neck. Even the appropriated SecuriCorp uniform I’m wearing has that basic precaution. Salzwedel really did go with the lowest bidder for this operation. Taking him at his word that his financial troubles really were entirely fabricated, it seems strange that he wouldn’t go with the best mercenaries available for this job- but maybe he figured his little scheme to entrap us was so good that the quality of people holding the actual guns didn’t matter. At the end of the day, he is just some rich asshole who got lucky, not a tactical genius of any sort.
Then again, I’m hardly in a position to be criticizing anybody’s tactical credentials right now. Instead of dwelling on that, I draw my tail as far back as it’ll go, until I can feel the tension in it. Then, eyes locked on my target, I whip the flexible appendage forward, and release its hold on the knife at the last possible moment. Whistling through the air, the blade strikes true, hitting the Yellowjacket merc in the back of the neck, a centimeter to the right of the spinal column, so it doesn’t get slowed down by the thick bone in the dead center of the neck.
Blood gushes from the wound, swiftly staining his yellow uniform red as he collapses to the ground, a final cry for help gurgling to nothing in his throat. However, quickly scanning the rest of the floor shows me that one of the others has changed direction, now heading this way, indicating he knows something is amiss. Even with a near-instant kill, people do sometimes manage to hold on long enough to send a silent call out over the brainband, but fortunately, it’s fairly rare. People just don’t have the same reflex to do that as they do to cry out aloud. Still, that’s most likely what happened in this case, unless one of the Yellowjackets just happens to be clairvoyant.
Clairvoyant or not, he’s still stupid, because he doesn’t call over any of the others, just approaches alone to investigate. Instead of running, I move closer to the body, then step into a room right next to it, closing the door behind me. I find myself in a spacious, well-appointed bathroom, which only really matters in this context because it’ll be much harder to suppress my footsteps on the polished tiles beneath my feet.
When the Yellowjacket turns the corner and sees his friend’s body, he rushes over, without pausing for a second to check for traps scan for anything suspicious. It’s an incredibly amateurish mistake, one I can’t see any of my Gazelles making. Except maybe Bret.
Waiting a second to calm my nerves, I put my hand on the doorknob. After a deep breath, I push it open, and rush into the hallway, tackling the Yellowjacket with as much force as I can muster. My hand goes to his mouth, keeping him from shouting for help, while my tail’s tip drives straight into his neck. Once it’s pierced the skin, I drag it across the artery as quickly as possible, hoping to kill him before he, too, can get off a silent cry.
This time, it seems to work. As I feel the mercenary go limp, and let him fall from my hands to lay on top of his friend, I do another quick check of the floor, and see that none of the others have moved significantly from where they were a few moments ago.
By my count, there are still three Yellowjackets left on this floor. Judging by the distinct lack of thunderclaps, Niko hasn’t yet started dealing with his lot. To make sure I shouldn’t be on the lookout for a sudden influx of new enemies, I send a quick, wordless query to Saffi, asking if she’s managed to hit the emergency shutdown on the teleportal yet. Fortunately, she responds with a yes, meaning I can focus entirely on the task at hand.
Wiping blood off my tail onto the leg of the SecuriCorp uniform I’m wearing, I head down the hall, towards one of the house’s guest bedrooms. It’s lucky the lights are all off, otherwise the bloody footprints I’m tracking across the polished white floor would be a bright red beacon indicating where I’m going. Normally I try to avoid that sort of thing, but surprising the second Yellowjacket beside the corpse of the first required me to step in a pool of the first guy’s blood. At least these aren’t my shoes. The sneakers I wore out this morning are sitting safely in the bottom of the duffel bag containing our gear.
The nearest living Yellowjacket is somewhere in the vicinity of Salzwedel’s dressing room, a spacious area that I recall from the spy-fly footage as containing a truly ludicrous amount of cravats, not unlike the one he was wearing in his holographic address to us earlier. If I’m lucky, I should be able to sneak up and knife him from behind, like I did to the other two. In case this goes wrong, though, I need to know where the other two are, so I can gauge how fast they’ll reach my position if they hear something.
One of them is exactly where he was the last time I checked, holed up in a closet of some kind. Not exactly the bravest choice, but probably the safest. My target is maybe a hundred yards away, though further in practical terms because there are several rooms between us that I can’t simply cut straight through to reach him. And the third…
“Don’t move a muscle,” a low, gravelly voice intones from behind me. Immediately, I curse myself for my own incompetence once more. Knowing there weren’t reinforcements coming through the teleportal, I let my guard down, forgetting that the Yellowjacket who rushed blindly in wasn’t necessarily the only one who heard my first victim’s silent cry of distress. And now another one of his friends has a gun trained on me from behind.
Usually, knowing the gun pointed at you only has rubber bullets in it would be a relief, but in this situation, it’s rather more chilling, because I know that if he shoots me and I pass out, I’ll never wake up. Not as ‘me,’ at least. I’ll be an unrecognizable puddle of psychic goop, rendered unrecoverable by Mindkiller. Everything that I am will be destroyed, in a way that not even resurrection technology can repair.
Forcing myself to breathe evenly, I do as he says, not moving even to raise my hands. He takes a single step towards me. By the sound of it, he’s still a short distance away, far enough that I couldn’t hope to hit him if I turned around and took a swing. Complying is, paradoxically, my best hope for survival in the near term.
“Drop the gun.”
I drop it, careful to ensure that it lands with the barrel pointing away from me. An accidental discharge being what kills me would be incredibly humiliating. Though that thought does serve as a useful reminder that, if worst comes to worst, I can self-terminate before he gets a chance to knock me out. If I’m quick enough.
“Good. Now put your hands behind your head.”
Once more, I do as he says, and he takes another few steps forward, now close enough that I can sense his general position relative to mine. More importantly, I can tell more or less where the gun is.
From the moment that I became aware of the presence of the Yellowjacket behind me, my tail has been lying limp on the ground, unmoving. In the darkness, he either hasn’t noticed it, or hasn’t considered it as anything more than an odd detail about the person he’s pointing a gun at. His mistake.
My tail snaps up, and coils around his wrists, then jerks them to the side, a mere instant before the gun goes off. The bullet streaks past my arm, gunshot sounding impossibly loud amidst the silence of the house. Ears still ringing, I whirl around and rush him, still fighting with my tail to prevent him from pointing the gun at me. That’ll only get harder in close quarters, but I don’t have much of a choice except to fight.
With his arms still bound, the Yellowjacket is at a disadvantage, but he’s still got some muscle mass on me, which he uses to its full extent by body-checking me as soon as I’m close enough. Unfortunately for him, I pull him along with me when I stumble back. And instead of trying to right myself, I let myself drop to the ground- right next to my sidearm.
Using my tail to keep his gun pointed straight down, I flip over to face him, and bring my own gun up, plugging him twice in the chest. He flinches each time, but somehow manages to stay upright, forcing me to take my time and aim, before putting a third shot straight between his eyes.
Finally, he drops, and I release my tail’s grip on him. There’s no time for me to catch my breath, though. Every Yellowjacket left on this floor will be rushing to this location after all those gunshots. I could run, but that would put me on the back foot, and I refuse to let myself become the prey here. I’m still the predator, and they’re about to find out why.
Kipping up to my feet, I holster my sidearm and rub the palms of my gloves together quickly, as if I was trying to build up a static charge. What I’m really doing, however, is activating the microfiber hairs on its surface, which will mimic the ability of a gecko to cling to walls. Not a part of the standard SecuriCorp kit, of course- I brought these from home, ordered off the Limbo City black market home shopping network. You never know when the ability to stick to surfaces will come in handy, after all.
Sure enough, another Yellowjacket arrives just a few moments after I’ve crawled up onto the ceiling, using my hands to stay attached, and bracing my legs against the wall so they don’t dangle downward conspicuously. It’s actually pretty difficult to keep from falling, even with the gloves, since I still have to basically hold up my own body weight, but fortunately I won’t be stuck like this for more than a minute or so.
Or at least that’s what I thought at first, but more than a minute passes, and the second Yellowjacket doesn’t show. I watch the first guy examine the body, look around uselessly for the culprit, never thinking to even glance upward, and then pause, motionless, as he presumably speaks with someone over the brainband.
Since my hands are occupied, I have to use my tail to flip the thermal goggles down over my eyes, and crane my neck to look for where the other Yellowjacket is. Thankfully he’s out of the closet and moving this way, but frustratingly slowly, as though he expects me to jump out from behind every closed door he passes. Which isn’t an incredibly unreasonable fear given how one of his allies died not a few minutes ago, but it’s still quite vexing.
Before he gets here, though, I hear the sound of thunder, sudden and unexpected, making me flinch. Flinch, and drop to the ground, my tenuous balancing act irretrievably thrown off by the jarring noise.
I land right on top of the Yellowjacket beneath me, and scramble to get on my feet, reaching for my sidearm while stabbing blindly with my tail to try and slow him down. My first few stabs go nowhere, stopped by the uniform he’s wearing, but I manage to hit an unprotected spot eventually, as evinced by the cry of pain he lets out.
That buys me a crucial few seconds, which I use to put some distance between us, and then draw my sidearm and empty the remainder of my magazine into his body while he’s still writhing in pain from being stabbed. As soon as I feel the gun kick for the last time, I eject the magazine and reach for my belt to grab a second one and reload, pressing myself up against the wall.
No sooner have I done that does a bullet fly down the hallway from the far end, fired by the last remaining Yellowjacket, having picked the exact worst moment to make his appearance. Slamming the new mag into place, I fire back, keeping myself flat against the wall to minimize the surface area he could hit.
The two of us fire at each other fruitlessly for several long seconds, the gunshots accompanied by distant thunder from Niko’s Regalia downstairs. Something tells me he’s having a much easier time dealing with his targets than I am.
Eventually, the Yellowjacket stops shooting, not because I’ve gotten a clean hit, but because he’s out of bullets, and ducking behind the corner to reload. Instead of doing the same, I pull a frag grenade from my belt, yanking out the pin with my tail so I don’t have to let go of my gun, and lob it down the hallway as forcefully as I can.
Remaining flat against the wall, I can’t see what happens, but I hear the sound of the grenade hitting the floor, and then the Yellowjacket shouts a single word- “Shit!” -before it detonates. Shrapnel and fragments of the floor and walls fly past me, a shard of metal coming dangerously close, and I don’t dare move until several seconds later.
Finally, when it becomes clear there are no Yellowjackets left, I let out a breath. Stepping out, I scan the hallway- without the goggles, as fresh corpses still have heat signatures -to make absolutely certain nobody’s still alive enough to shoot me. Once I’m sure, I let out a sigh.
Second floor is clear, I inform the others.
Good. Get back down here. Salzwedel wants to chat.
----------------------------------------
The fastest route back down to the first floor of the house takes me through the kitchen, and past about a dozen charred, smoking corpses, victims of the Hurricane Howl. This is the first time I’ve gotten a proper look at what it can do, since last time was made a little hectic by all the bullets flying. It’s not pretty.
A banal fact floats through my mind as I pass by the corpses- only about ten percent of ‘natural’ lightning strikes are lethal. Obviously, that’s not an acceptable metric for a weapon designed to use electricity as its method of death-dealing. Most of what makes the Howl so deadly is the fact that it produces lightning bolts with a far higher voltage than the average lightning strike, strong enough to both burn flesh, and far more importantly, stop a person’s heart in seconds. The corpses are charred and scorched, but if you performed an autopsy, most of them would be found to have died of cardiac arrest.
The other thing that makes the Howl so dangerous is that almost every piece of equipment worn by a modern soldier is highly conductive. Guns, gear, armor, even just the metal buckles on your belt, all sufficient to attract chain lightning strong enough to fry your nervous system And that effect is compounded by the fact that any soldiers have subdermal implants of some kind, which are conductive as well. This might seem like a glaring vulnerability, but only to one specific gun that hasn’t seen use on a battlefield in centuries. And even if that wasn’t the case, wearing an all rubber ensemble just on the off chance you’d run into the Stormwolf one day is pretty ridiculous.
On the other hand, the Yellowjackets knew exactly what they were walking into, and they still didn’t take the proper precautions. It’s only thanks to their incompetence that we’ll be walking out of here, I suspect. How humiliating, to be saved not by my own wit or skill, but by the idiocy of my enemies.
When I return to the hallway where Salzwedel first confronted us, outside the still-sealed passageway to his sub-level trophy room, it’s with a confident expression on my face. No matter how much I might be beating myself up internally, I can’t let him see anything other than total self-assuredness if this is going to work.
“How kind of you to finally join us, Izanami,” the holographic Salzwedel says contemptuously. He looks a little more shaken than he did earlier, but still clearly hasn’t accepted his own defeat yet. It’ll be my job to talk him into doing so.
Presumably he put together who I am, despite the FalseFace implant, after I revealed my tail earlier. Not that I’m the only person in the entire Imperium with a tail that looks like this, but I’m definitely the only one who’s a known associate of Nikolai Genov.
“Sorry to keep you waiting,” I reply smoothly. “A shame you couldn’t be here in person, though. Niko is just dying to meet you.”
To emphasize the point, Niko grins ferally and hefts the Hurricane Howl. Even with the holographic filter distorting his features, I see Salzwedel’s expression flicker slightly at that.
“We will be meeting in person soon enough,” he replies, not quite managing to hide a tremor in his voice. “The three of you, and your friend locked in my trophy room, will be surrendering yourselves to me voluntarily. If you fail to do so, I will have your families killed. Permanently.”
He knows my name, so that’s the obvious threat to make. I did at least have the foresight to make my parents install some defenses around the family home, but if Salzwedel put his mind to it, I’m sure he could still manage to make good on his threat. Assuming he hired a better class of mercenary, at least.
“You could do that. But all you’d really be doing is removing the only reason we have not to kill you. And however much you might want this plan of yours to work out, I don’t think you’re really willing to forfeit your own life over it.”
The ship manufacturing magnate blinks in surprise at my casual willingness to write off my own parents. If you asked me in another context whether I’d actually be willing to let them die just to save my own skin, I might answer differently. But in a situation like this, you have to genuinely believe everything you’re saying, no matter how repugnant you might find it under different circumstances.
“You… make a compelling point,” he says eventually. “Very well. If you return the Regalia, and my other possessions, I shall permit you to leave, and take no further action against you or yours.”
He’s already folding. That’s good news for us. But I’m not about to take a deal like that. For one, it would still leave us in the hole with the triad- but even if not, I still wouldn’t settle for walking away without the Regalia.
“Nah. I don’t think so. We’re leaving with what we came for, and you’re gonna keep your mouth shut anyway. Because if you don’t, we’ll tell the entire Imperium that you were holding onto a lost Regalia illegally, and what you were gonna do to Niko in order to use it.”
An incredulous look flashes across his face, replaced almost immediately with haughty condescension.
“Oh, please. Pick a less obvious bluff next time, girl. You would be incriminating yourselves along with me.”
“Sure would,” I shoot back. “But I’m not worried about it, ‘cause at the end of the day, you’re more replaceable than us.”
“Wha- More repla- Are you mad?” he sputters indignantly. “If I had the pair of you permanently killed, your replacements would be born within the hour!”
“Yep. And if you exposed the fact that we broke in here, it’s possible we’d both get retired early. But here’s the thing. Replacing two nobles is inconvenient. Our positions in the Imperial Navy would be filled by stewards for another two decades or more. It would be an embarrassment- not to mention, public opinion would likely favor us, given we only broke the law to rectify an ancient injustice.”
“I fail to see how that makes me more replaceable than you,” he snaps. “I run a company that supplies your precious Navy with more than half of its warships!”
Just to drive home how little I care about any of this, I lean back against the wall with one foot up. Seeing my bloodstained boot stain his pristine white walls makes Salzwedel wince slightly.
“Right. If Blitzar disappeared tomorrow, the Imperium might be in trouble. But we’re not talking about Blitzar disappearing. Just you. And what is it you actually do, Mister CEO? What’s your value-add? You didn’t design any of those ships, and you certainly aren’t helping build them. So if you vanished tomorrow, what would actually be lost that couldn’t be regained by sticking another stuffed shirt in your position?”
Beside me, Saffi snickers quietly as Salzwedel fumes, trying to find a way to refute my logic. Under different circumstances, he’d probably try to bluster his way out of this, justify his own worth with some pile of bullshit about how invaluable a CEO is to the company’s success. But here, with the possibility of early retirement very much on the table, it seems he can’t muster any of that bluster.
There’s a long stretch of silence, where I watch anger slowly rise to the surface on Salzwedel’s face, then get forced back down with an almost Herculean effort. It would be impressive if it didn;t look so much like he was trying to hold back an inconvenient shit.
“Fine,” he spits eventually. “Take your spoils and leave. I’ll buy them back soon enough regardless. But don’t think for a moment that this is over.”
His pathetic little attempt to feel powerful even while capitulating is enough to make me laugh.
“Uh, sorry, dude. I think I was pretty clear before. This is absolutely over. You can’t expose us without fucking yourself over. You come after anybody we care about, and you sign your own death warrant. You come after us… well, I’ll have a deadman’s switch running by the end of the day, for starters. But that only matters if you manage to kill us, and I can promise that you won’t.”
By now, Salzwedel is grinding his teeth so hard they must be close to cracking. Hoping to push him over the edge, I wink and blow a kiss at his holographic avatar, before sending the Recluse the signal that it’s now safe to come out from behind the reinforced high-security door.
Our security specialist rejoins us a few moments later, carrying both the bag full of our loot, and the duffel containing our equipment. With the whole party reassembled, I grin at Salzwedel and saunter off towards the teleportal room, leaving him to seethe.
“We’re going to have to deal with him anyway, aren’t we?” Niko asks the moment we’re out of earshot of Salzwedel’s holo-projector drone.
“Oh, for sure. But let’s take at least one night off to relax before we start worrying about that.”