Oddly enough, none of my usual pre-battle nerves are manifesting as we approach the SecuriCorp offices in the city of Temmas, on New Arrach. I suspect it’s got something to do with the fact that what we’re doing is illegal. There’s a unique thrill to breaking the rules. And it doesn’t hurt that, for once, I don’t have the eyes of the entire Imperium on me, judging my performance against every over Noble of my line.
This office building, while not exactly a fortress, does have some security measures meant to prevent people from just waltzing in without permission. Fortunately, we have a top-class security expert with us. The Recluse’s spoofed credentials allow us to stride straight through the lobby unmolested, the hidden turrets in the ceiling remaining inactive.
Our security expert’s new body looks almost nothing like his previous one. If you asked a layperson what his role in our heist crew was, they’d probably say ‘the muscle,’ because that’s exactly what he’s covered in. It’s generally considered somewhat tasteless to wear a body with such obvious artificial strength, but he’s only gonna be using this one for a few hours before he goes back to the chair, so I’m not gonna judge.
The one security measure in this building we can’t deactivate completely is the camera network. In order to avoid being recognized, we’re all wearing FalseFace implants, which make us look like completely different people. I’ve also got my tail wrapped around my body, underneath my clothes, to make sure nobody recognizes me by my unusual appendage.
While the rest of us are silent and still, the Recluse taps his foot along nervously to the beat of the peppy jazzflash song playing in the elevator. Since he’s the one with the muscles, he’s also carrying the duffel bag full of gear we’re going to need for the job. All of us are carrying our own weapons- no need to hide them in this building. If the automated security flagged everybody who came to work with a gun, none of the SecuriCorp officers would make it through the front door.
As the elevator rapidly approaches our destination on the sixty-seventh floor, I tap the Recluse on the shoulder and gesture towards the bag. He deposits it on the floor, and opens up the top. Swiftly, Saffi, Niko and I all retrieve three identical pairs of thermal imaging goggles. They’re calibrated specifically to seek human heat signatures, and powerful enough to see through all but the thickest walls. A fortified military compound might have defenses against tech like this. An office building, not so much.
SecuriCorp isn’t a massive outfit like Palladium or the Junkyard Hounds. They don’t own entire asteroids devoted to housing miniature armies. Instead, they cater to a select clientele, people like Salzwedel. And they rely on anonymity to protect them, which is precisely why most of their regional HQs are in places like this. Why bother maintaining a massive base, when you can just rent out a couple dozen offices all over the Imperium, where your contractors can hang around before their shifts in the homes of the wealthy and powerful begin. It’s low-profile, too, which means it’s less of a target.
I strap the goggles on, but wait until we hit floor sixty-seven to pull them down over my eyes. When the doors open, I see the world in cool blue, with a cluster of glaring red lights demanding my attention. Drawing my sidearm, I glance to Niko and Saffi to see they’ve done the same. Despite his new, burly frame, the Recluse won’t be participating in the shooting side of things. Killing people isn’t his area of expertise. But it is ours.
The SecuriCorp office isn’t even the only one on this floor, but fortunately, there don’t seem to be very many people in any of the others. Still, we’ll need to keep things quick and quiet. If anybody alerts the authorities, we’ll likely be compromised, even after we’re through the teleportal. Won’t take a genius to figure out where we went, or why.
All three of us affix silencers to our weapons- compact black cubes no more than an inch in diameter, which neatly slot onto the barrel of just about any weapon in existence, and suppress some ninety-five percent of all sound without taking up excess space. Convenient little gadgets. I didn’t bring the Trident with me for this job- it’s a versatile weapon, but not exactly subtle.
After a quick countdown on the brainband, Niko kicks open the door to the SecuriCorp office, the only thing branding it as anything other than an ordinary corporate suite being the logo, a padlock with a pair of crossed swords behind it, and the letters SC in the center.
Immediately, a holographic receptionist winks to life behind the front desk, features unnaturally symmetrical and smooth, without a hint of hair anywhere on its ‘body.’ Before it can say a word and alert the human inhabitants of the office to our presence, Niko fires a single shot, which passes through it, and hits the projector on the wall, causing it to disappear.
From here, there are three doors, each leading into a different part of the office. There are heat sigs in every direction, meaning we’re going to have to split up. Fortunately, we all studied the floor plan in advance, so I don’t have to give anybody orders. Niko heads for the door on the far wall, behind the desk, where the office’s command center is located. Saffi breaks right, towards the manager’s office. I take the left, which leads to the break room.
With my free hand, I push the door open slowly, and sweep the room. In the corner of my eye, I spot a man in a green-and-gray SecuriCorp uniform, standing by a coffee machine, filling up a mug. He notices me at almost exactly the same time, and whirls around in surprise. Instinct takes over, and I pull the trigger, sending a single round through his eye and into the wall. He drops the mug, but whether it’s thanks to sturdy design or the carpeted floors, it doesn’t shatter, just lands with a soft thud, meaning our presence here is still a secret.
As the body slumps to the ground, blood pooling together with hot coffee to create a permanent stain in the carpet, I poke my head- and my gun -into the adjoining bathroom, to make sure there’s nobody sitting on the toilet wondering what’s going on outside. There are no heat sigs inside, but better safe than sorry. Fortunately, it’s empty. I’d have felt a little bad about shooting someone while they were shitting.
I read once, in some old book, that humans used to have a reflex that caused them to shit themselves when they died. Makes me glad that’s edited out of us by default now, else the War Games would be a lot more unpleasant. Though apparently the real reason that reflex was removed was to make the process of recycling dead bodies for their biomass more efficient, since having to powerwash the lower half of every corpse before it could be recycled added up to a lot of cumulative time.
The next nearest heat signature comes from a room just off of the break room. Now that I’m close, I can make out the SecuriCorp contractor’s silhouette more clearly. Strangely, he looks like he’s holding a gun, but it’s not pointed anywhere near me, so it doesn’t seem like he’s heard me. Putting my ear to the door, I listen closely and hear the muffled sound of silenced gunshots. That’s when I put it together- they must have a shooting range here. Not a large one, and they probably can’t use real ammo without voiding the lease, but still, this is perfect for me. That guy in there is completely focused on his targets, and he’s most likely wearing noise-canceling headphones. He wouldn’t notice me unless I ran naked across the firing range itself, with a target painted in bright red on my backside.
Instead of doing that, I move away from the wall, keeping my eyes on the shooter just in case he unexpectedly decides to point that gun in my direction, and open the main line.
Nightingale, what’s your status?
Immediately, I hear Niko sigh at being referred to by his codename.
All good, Condor. Control room is clear.
Good. Mind killing the cameras for me?
He doesn’t ask why, or even make a snarky comment, just sends a wordless pulse of assent. Then, a few seconds later, another one confirming that he’s done as asked.
Thanks. See you soon.
With the cameras off, I can now unfurl my tail, and use it to pluck a short, thin needle from my belt. That wouldn’t have been possible before I came to the Citadel, but after my second death here, I decided I needed to make my tail more than just a fashion statement with a sharp bit on the end. So now, the barb can split open like a pincer, making it capable of grasping and holding things. It’s dangerously close to having an additional limb, which is, if not outright illegal, certainly pushing the boundaries of acceptable body modification. That’s why I try not to show this particular capability off. Though that’s not exactly the reason I wanted the cameras killed, so much as the general idea that my tail is fairly distinctive, and seeing it on security footage would make it easier to identify me as being a part of this heist.
Cracking the door open, I snake my tail through, careful to keep it out of the shooter’s line of sight. It’s two feet long when fully extended, so it’s more than capable of reaching over to him from this distance. Once it’s close enough, I draw back slightly, then jam the needle straight into his neck. He squeezes the trigger reflexively, and then tries to turn towards me, but the paralytic is already taking effect, locking his joints in place. We don’t need him alive, of course, which is why the paralytic is only half of what this particular substance does. The other half is a good old fashioned neurotoxin, which will kill him relatively painlessly in the next few seconds. But I needed him paralyzed to ensure he wouldn’t fight back, so I could avoid having to damage his uniform like I did with the guy I shot earlier. The plan is to masquerade as these guys, which is a lot harder to pull off in an outfit covered in blood.
Slowly easing the needle out of his neck, to minimize the blood loss from the wound, I let the body drop to the floor and wait for several moments until I’m certain he’s not going to jolt upright and attack me.
My rooms are clear. What’s your status, Mockingbird?
Same here, Saffi replies curtly. We haven’t had much time to talk since the other night, and I was a little worried that it would make things weird afterward, but that mostly doesn’t seem to have been the case. I guess getting caught up in your own emotions is a luxury you can’t afford in her line of work.
This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.
Good. We’re all clear, then. Recluse, you’re free to enter. Let’s meet up in the command center.
Stepping over the body on the ground, I head out of the firing range, which is exactly as unimpressive as I expected of a firing range built inside of an office building to be, and back through the break room, into the reception area, and then behind the desk, into the office’s nerve center.
The barrel of Niko’s gun is the first thing I see as I enter the room, though he lowers it quickly after realizing it’s me. He’s sitting in a desk chair, legs crossed, looking bored, and nods at me as I walk in.
The command center looks pretty much exactly like what I expected. Walls covered in holo-screens displaying feeds from different locations that this SecuriCorp office is contracted to protect, a big control table in the center of the room, and several desks on either side of the room with analog computer terminals on them. Two corpses sit on the floor, and one of the computer terminals has a bullet hole in it, but besides that, there aren’t many signs that there was a fight in here. Niko was characteristically efficient, it seems.
This SecuriCorp office serves a fairly large sector of Imperium space, but has only a handful of actual clients in all of that space, Salzwedel being one of them. It doesn’t take very long for me to locate the holo-screens corresponding to his home. They don’t display security camera feeds- Salzwedel’s home security system is on a different network from the people he actually pays to guard the place -but rather the personal perspective feeds of the guards currently patrolling the place.
Saffi enters through another door, knocking first to make sure we don’t shoot her, which is probably what I should have done too. Shortly after, the Recluse follows, dumping the duffel bag on the ground once he’s inside.
“I’m here,” he announces redundantly, smiling at us.
“Okay, we’ve got about twenty minutes before the current shift ends. I want everybody to go find a body with an undamaged uniform that fits them, and put it on. If you can’t find one, go hit the armory, there should be something for you there, but make it quick. After that, we need to take the bodies and dump them in the bathroom, and lock up the doors so that nobody comes snooping around here and realizes we shot the place up. That clear? Good. Get moving.”
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Twenty minutes later, the four of us are wearing green-gray SecuriCorp uniforms over our clothes, and waiting by the office’s teleportal hub for the team on duty to return. Finding a uniform that fit me right was harder than I thought it would be, mostly due to the size of the personnel here compared to my relatively slender frame. Shockingly, the kind of people who go into private security tend to be the sort of people who favor extremely muscular bodies. For that same reason, the Recluse had no trouble at all finding something that fit him fine.
Talking to him is still weird, considering how different he looks compared to the emaciated husk we met just yesterday. Even the way he speaks is different, less stilted and formal. There’s a certain strange enthusiasm about him, which I guess isn’t actually all that strange. This is practically a vacation for him, a brief chance to live like an ordinary person before he has to go back to his life of total mediation, seeing and doing nothing except through a technological interface.
The office’s teleportal hub is just another room, mostly empty except for an emergency control panel off to the side, which can be used to manually program the hub in the unlikely event that transmitting your destination and access codes via the brainband is impossible.
“Shouldn’t they be here by now?” the Recluse asks, sounding more curious than nervous. All four of us are positioned around the empty doorframe that is the teleportal, ready for the SecuriCorp contractors to emerge so we can take them down.
“Yeah. Probably just running a little late. They should have no way of knowing what happened here.”
“Unless one of the people we killed managed to trigger a silent alarm,” Saffi points out, grip on her twin pistols not wavering.
“Fair point, but don’t you think the cops would have already showed up if that was the case?” Niko responds, likewise maintaining his focus on the teleportal while he talks. The way they’re speaking, you’d think it was the weather we were discussing, not the possibility that we’re about to get busted for a list of crimes that’s already very long, even though we haven’t even started the main part of the heist yet.
Before I can tell them to shut up, though, the teleportal hums to life, a shimmer of light spreading across the empty doorframe, and a low thrum of energy permeating the room. It’s a wider teleportal than the one we used to get here, big enough for multiple people to pass through at once. Despite what some uninformed people believe, there’s zero chance of becoming molecularly entangled with another person if you do that. These teleportals don’t actually deconstruct you at the atomic level and put you back together somewhere else- they’re just miniature wormholes.
You can probably imagine the surprised expressions on the faces of the first two SecuriCorp guards to come through the teleportal, to find people wearing their comrades’ uniforms, but pointing guns in their faces. The woman on the left only gets out a confused “Wha--?”, while the other manages an entire “Why are you--?” before we open fire.
“Bitch to be you right now,” the Recluse quips, emptying his magazine into the back of one of the fallen guards. Niko shoots him a quizzical look. “What? It’s from a movie.”
The next guard to emerge steps right onto the ankle of one of his dead friends, trips, and falls face-first onto the corpse, before quickly becoming one himself thanks to some sharp shooting by Saffi. The next wanders haplessly through, unaware of what just happened thanks to our silencers, and the fact that noise doesn’t travel through a teleportal. It’s only after seeing three corpses right in front of him that he realizes anything’s wrong. The man stares at us, confounded, and squints at me in particular.
“Wait, you guys aren’t--”
However he was going to finish that thought, we never get a chance to find out, because I put a round straight through his neck. Shocked, he claps his hands to the wound, but the damage is already done, and he falls to the ground, gasping for air as blood begins to fill his lungs. Out of pity, I put another in his skull, ending his suffering. It’s just good manners.
“Should we put them in with the rest?” the Recluse asks, jerking his thumb in the general direction of the bathroom we filled with corpses.
“Nah, no time. Let’s go.”
Stepping over a pile of bodies, we walk through the teleportal, and the heist begins in earnest.
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On New Arrach, it was mid-morning. Here on Liese, it’s the middle of the night. Time in the Imperium is generally calculated based on two clocks- Local Relative Time, which is based on whatever planet you happen to be standing on, and Imperial Standard Time, which is calculated based on the current time on Prime, the capital-world. Day to day, you only really use LRT, because it determines when you eat, sleep, and get off work, but IST has its uses as well. Mainly people use it to schedule interplanetary meetings and other events, since calculating the time difference between two planets that could be millions of light years apart is next to impossible. You also use IST whenever you’re off-planet, be it living on a space station, asteroid, or in transit aboard a ship.
Moving from the brightly lit SecuriCorp office to the dark interior of Salzwedel’s home is slightly disorienting, but all four of us adjust quickly enough. A quick scan using the thermal goggles verifies what we already knew- there’s nobody else here but us. And unless we somehow fuck up badly enough that this takes eight hours, it should stay that way ‘til we’re gone.
Okay. First stop is the security control panel, one floor up. Remember, we can’t start smashing and grabbing until after the security system’s suppressed, so keep your hands in your pockets.
Saffi and Niko both nod seriously, and for a moment, I wish Sofie was here with us to make a joke or something. Pushing that feeling aside, I follow the trail I laid out for myself, a thread of Ariadne visible only to me, overlaid onto my vision. The spy-fly we sent in ahead of us mapped the place out, and I used that map to determine our path through the house. Now all I have to do is follow that path, and not deviate from the plan.
Despite having heard my own words just a few seconds ago, it’s hard to resist the impulse to start stealing immediately, especially when we walk past a silver skull sitting in a glass case, with a pair of gemstones in its eye sockets, green and red respectively. Unfortunately, it’s not on our list, no matter how valuable it might be- the plan affords no time for backtracking.
Doing my best to ignore the other priceless works of art and artifacts we pass, I lead the group up the nearest flight of stairs, and to a seemingly innocuous wooden panel in the wall. Without the drone, I’d have had no idea it was here, but the little fly’s sensors were precise enough to pick up something concealed behind this panel, and its analysis of the house’s security system suggests that almost everything is routed through this one spot.
Taking a prybar from the duffel bag, I pop the panel out of the wall, and then step back to let the Recluse have at it. He crouches down, awkwardly thanks to his hulking frame, and retrieves a set of precise-looking tools from the bag to begin rewiring the system. Disabling it outright is off the table, since there’s undoubtedly a failsafe to lock the entire place down if the alarms are taken offline without proper authorization. Instead, what the Recluse is doing is significantly raising the alarm’s trigger threshold. Normally, so much as scratching the glass on one of those cases would have triggered the entire security system to activate, but once he’s done, it won’t register anything less than a bomb going off as cause to actually start the alarm.
It takes several minutes for the Recluse to crack the encryption. While he’s doing that, I head over to the nearest window and take a look outside. Even in the middle of the night, the view is breathtaking. The cobalt peaks glitter in the distance, and a flock of iridescent starfeather birds pass over the forest below, sparkling like their namesake against the night sky.
Liese is a conservatory world, meant to be wholly untouched by humankind. It’s practically criminal that people like Salzwedel are allowed to build homes here. The Nobility system was intended to keep people with lots of money from amassing too much power and influence, because a Noble’s position is guaranteed, so there’s no reason for them to take bribes. But that doesn’t apply to the stewards who occupy a Noble’s position while they’re still at the Citadel, all the while knowing they’ll soon have to step down and take a power position. With that in mind, it’s much easier for them to justify modifying the rules so someone like Salzwedel can live on a planet like Liese just because he feels like it.
“Got it!” the Recluse cries triumphantly, stepping away from the panel and raising his hands to the skies in victory.
“Great. Close it back up, and somebody grab the bag. This is where the fun part starts.”
“Let the looting begin,” he intones.
“Uh, yeah. Sure. Just do it.”
From inside the duffel bag, Niko retrieves a folded-up cloth sack. Maybe the most low-tech way of transporting our ill-gotten gains imaginable, but we couldn’t exactly have brought a hovercart in here with us. This’ll just have to do.
“Okay, good. We’re on the third floor now. My path takes us all the way down to the basement, where the Regalia is.” Or where I think it is, at least. “Secondary objective remains the same- there’s a specific quota we need to meet with regards to the value of what we bring back. The path I laid out takes us past a number of items that should meet that quota, plus a few extra for good measure. That said, we’ve got plenty of time, and the security system is suppressed, so if you see something shiny that you think might be valuable, feel free to grab it and throw it in the bag. Let’s move out.”