The pair froze as both turrets spun to face them, heavy caliber slug throwers locked onto them, and smaller, short-range grazers deployed from a shielded side section.
“Uh…Officer?” the woman, Tartaglia, called hesitantly, and I flicked the control, speaking up.
“Yes?” I asked distractedly.
“The…the turrets—” she tried to explain, and I cut her off.
“You were being monitored as we walked down the corridor by one of our AIs. You attempted to make a call, then you started recording the event, including my face, despite being warned not to.”
“N…no—”
“You were under observation,” I continued. “Your transmissions were rerouted to a secure server, and you’ve been offline since you entered the security section. We have a full recording of you, of the warnings I gave you, and your attempts to circumvent them, as well as your comments about the blackmail you have stored. Your guest status here has been revoked, and the turrets are set to terminate you if you attempt to leave the area or access this office. Sit down in the corner and be quiet. The commander will be here to speak with you shortly.”
With that, I cut the speakers and shifted to Bowdoin.
“How we looking, Bowdoin?” I muttered.
“Not good, very busy…” he grunted. “System has accepted you. You now have full auth, and the security RI believes you’re here on top-level corpo-sec business.”
“That good?” I asked.
“It means I don’t have to delete your images from the servers. The RI is doing it for us. As soon as we leave the site, it’ll perform a full security wipe as well. Currently, I’ve got it believing that there’s been a breach and we’re here to remove the evidence before there’s an audit.” He chuckled. “I can’t believe the corpos had that contingency in place. Must have happened before.”
“An audit?”
“Governmental oversight, Kabutt. The corpos let them watch over them all, and they pretend to play along, but fuck, that there’s an actual position in the system architecture for a corporate evidence eraser? Makes a joke of that oversight, doesn’t it. I mean, hell, they didn’t even hide the role!”
“You complaining?” I asked, vaguely amused by the offended tone in his voice.
“Listen, I’ve just hacked my way into a corpo system. I’ve diverted RIs, I’ve convinced security turrets that not only should they not shoot you, but that you’re God as far as they’re concerned. I’ve done all of this, and right at the end, you know what I found?”
“No.”
“An AI.”
“What?!”
“It’s watching us, and it’s not fucking interested,” Bowdoin growled. “Seriously, I found the limits for it. It’s watching the security system, and as long as we’re not going near the lower floors? The cut-off high-security areas? It doesn’t give a shit.”
“That’s good, right?”
“It’s a newly awakened AI, Kabutt. It’s got the processing power to go through everything we’ve done so far like a fucking nuke, and it doesn’t care. It looks like it’s been told where its borders are, and it’s not aware enough to care beyond that. This…it’s the equivalent of you strolling up to the armory door and finding it’s unlocked and everyone went out to lunch. It fucking offends me, all right?”
“It offends you?” I smiled, checking the last of the details over and making sure we had complete control.
“There’s a right way to do things, all right?”
“You’d rather we were all dead?”
“Well, no…”
“Then shut the fuck up, Bowdoin, and stay the hell away from that thing and the lower floors!” I snorted. “Right. Do we need the girls in here?”
“Rather than leave them in the car, you mean? I guess it could be funny, but…”
“Is there a reason to march them through the building to here, or should we just leave you in charge of this, I mean?” I asked him.
“Better they’re here,” he admitted. “If anything happens and I get cut off? We’re fucked if we don’t have a physical ass in the seat.”
“Can you route them through to here?” I asked, and he nodded.
“I’ll divert them around people and get them up. I’ve got full control of security now.”
“Glad to hear it. Have we got anything interesting in here?” I looked around the large office, noting the row of narrow but tall lockers on the far side.
“No clue. Let’s find out,” Bowdoin said distractedly. “Locks, locks, locks…here we go! Thank the Keeper for orderly file administration!”
The locks on the doors popped as I walked over and glanced inside. I couldn’t help but fucking smile.
The first one was clearly in case of riots or something—why they needed riot gear in a pleasure tower, I don’t fucking know; maybe they’d run out of flavored lube or something—but as well as the corpo-sec equivalent of body armor, there was also a full riot loadout.
“Mine!” I proclaimed loudly, grinning and pulling a weapon I’d rarely seen in the real world but had always wanted to try.
Well, to try using on someone else, anyway.
The Riot Suppression [Non-Lethal] Electro-Impact Lance, or RSEIL, also known as the arse-lance, was the kind of a weapon that could only be dreamed up by a truly sadistic bastard.
It was as long as a rifle and offered three settings:
First, Ranged.
It fired a riot suppression round, much the same as the one that had hit Reign in the tit earlier, just more powerful. It was a rubberized, electrified mass that when it hit—with the force of a pissed-off orc’s best punch—it spread out and released a high-powered electrical shock to the victim.
It was powerful enough to knock most people out with a single hit, and the magazine carried thirty shots.
Ranged Suppression setting was much the same, except that it was the fully automatic version, and it’d fucking kill anyone who took more than two or three hits, I had no doubt.
Last, and arguably the most fun, was Impact.
The arse-lance was basically a stub-barreled rifle in the first two settings, but in the third, the additional four prongs that laid flat to the barrel in the first settings, slid out and into place, forming a four-pronged, and highly electrified impact weapon that now resembled a long-barreled rifle or lance.
The original version also came with an attachment that basically turned the end into a flanged, electrified mace, but that’d been removed from the market after excess deaths.
Something about it being made of steel and having sharpened points that you were encouraged to use to hit people made it difficult to market as a “non-lethal” riot suppression device.
I searched the locker quickly, and to my disappointment found that they’d not stocked the attachment.
On the upside, I now had a wonderful toy to help Tyrannus talk.
There were also three boxes of grenades, helpfully marked as To Suppress Riots Only. What kind of riots needed three boxes of thirty grenades—namely sticky, flash-bang and fragmentation—to “suppress,” I didn’t know, but by the time the girls made it to the security office, I was feeling much more cheerful.
I dressed in the full security riot suppression gear, and as the girls walked in, staring open-mouthed at me, I grinned and waved to the four remaining suits in invitation.
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
They didn’t waste any time, grabbing them and stripping their old gear off, replacing it in favor of the new, much more expensive mil-spec gear.
“Pervert,” Bowdoin muttered into my ear at one point, and I jerked, twisting away from the view of Reign bent over at the waist, struggling to pull the armor into place.
“Your ass is fantastic,” Luna, ever the example of subtlety, complimented Reign.
“Thank you.” She grinned back. “It’s home grown…”
“So are these,” Luna agreed, squeezing a tit then laughing as I abruptly about-faced, trying not to choke on my damn tongue.
“Fuck’s sake, you two, get a room!” I groaned, before moving over and checking on the figure on the floor. My shot to the neck had been more in the muscle than the bone and windpipe, but still, it’d been damn near to the artery, and it’d clearly been enough to scare the shit out of him.
He’d stayed where he was since being moved aside, and had basically been laid with his face pressed to the floor, muttering prayers.
Now, the nanites having sealed the wounds in his neck and slowed the bleeding in both knees, he was woozy, suggestable, and weak. Perfect.
“Bowdoin, keep yourself in his implants, just in case, and monitor things here,” I ordered, tugging my armor straight. “Reign, keep control of this place as long as possible. Use that guy to route the local security on constant patrols or whatever. Hold this place as long as you can, then use the turrets to cover your retreat. Get to the armored car in…”
“Bay S-01,” Bowdoin said into our comms. “I’ve set it to open to one of you four only, and got you all in the system the same as Kabutt—anything you do, the security system RI will erase, which I’m starting to love, by the way.”
“How long do you think we have?” I asked him.
“Maybe an hour, two at most?” he admitted. “The security team are used to being sent on bogus patrols if there’s a ‘visitor’ to the security office. Feel free to add in whatever kind you want, but they’ll get suspicious eventually. Either they’ll come to check what’s going on, or they’ll come expecting their ‘turn’. Either way, that’s when all hell breaks loose. Of course, any outsider could crash the party any second. So glad I’m doing this remotely.”
“When that happens, you use the full riot gear, helmets down, the works. Bowdoin, is there a general ‘get the fuck outta our way’ code?”
“Uh…not really, not in the security lexicon…Although…”
“Yeah?”
“You could take him with you?” he suggested. “I mean, he’s a security guard—pretend he’s injured and carry him out?”
“Security guards wouldn’t be a good enough reason for people to get out of the way,” Reign pointed out, before nodding at the pair on the other side of the security glass out the front. “Maybe one of those, though?”
“What do we do with them afterward?” Luna asked.
“Open the doors as we’re flying away, give them a flying lesson,” Gessh suggested. “They’re corpo fuckheads.”
“Sounds good to me,” I said. “Fine, you guys get to the car if you get into trouble, then come to me. I’ll find a way to the ground floor or the roof, depending—”
“That’s a point…the gamma cannons?” Reign pointed out. “They’d slow us down?”
“Nope. Authorized vehicle, authorized crew—they’ll protect you,” Bowdoin corrected.
“Damn, you are useful.” Reign smiled.
“You have no idea.” He grinned, his vid-link bouncing his eyebrows suggestively. “Anyway, I’d love to chat, but I’m already fending off curious security staff, so…maybe move your ass, Kabutt?”
“I’m gone.” I pocketed a last few of the grenades and another spare magazine.
That was four I had now, all stashed about my person, with three sticky, three frag, and six flash-bang grenades, my handgun, the standard-issue handgun, both my two small and the new two large medikits, the arse-lance, and my vibro-blade.
Add to that, I was now in full riot suppression mil-spec gear, which was awesome. It wasn’t up to my usual APS level of gear of course, but nothing was.
It was good gear, though: heavy armoring on the torso, upper legs and shoulders, less so on the arms and lower legs, as well as the crotch. It was flame resistant, treated to make sure liquid rolled straight off in case of firebombs, and powered, although only minorly.
The battery was good for about ten uses, and the augments in the arms and legs could either make you run fast for about thirty seconds, punch like a piledriver, or lift a metric ton plus for a few seconds before draining.
It was as much smoke and mirrors as it was effective realistic gear. After all, rioters who saw you blurring across the road to them in this gear, killing their friends with a single punch, and lifting a car weren’t going to hang around long enough to make sure you had enough of a charge for round two.
The helmet was shitty, really. Yes, it was a full-face helm as I liked, but it connected to the upper armor and seriously limited mobility.
It looked awesome, though, and seriously intimidating.
The only problem with it all? I still had to wear my stolen security gear under it, so that I looked the part, unlike the girls. I was going to be walking through the center, after all; they would only be running to the car.
Add to that I was wearing my stealth gear underneath, as I might need it and didn’t want to just dump it, and under that? My normal clothes.
I was sweating like a corpo getting audited, and that was before I started waddling—walking was seriously starting to chafe now—toward the door.
“You shit yourself, Sarge?” Reign called to me.
I shot her the finger as they all laughed, before forcing myself to move as naturally as possible. I paused between the turrets as I faced the corpo pair who had accosted me earlier.
“Stay here,” I ordered them. “My team may decide to separate you. If that happens, do as you’re told and you might live through this. As it is? You’re on borrowed time.”
“I’ve got credits!” the man, Barabbas, quickly declared, only to have his wife speak over him.
“I’ll make it worth your while to let me go!” Tartaglia said. “Blackmail, secrets, credits…I’ve got access to it all. You could be rich.”
I ignored them, snorting in amusement as the pair bickered.
The trip to Tyrannus’s floor didn’t take long. Reign watched me on the map and routed me around the occasional security guard or upper staff member as they patrolled, and once in the lift, she blocked it stopping for anyone else, using the security override.
When the doors opened on the floor I needed—Bowdoin had confirmed that Tyrannus was in his room, alone—I wasn’t sure what I’d been expecting, but the sight and sounds that greeted me sure as shit weren’t it.
The lower floors were standard apartment or office block in design, concrete in most places and marble wherever a corpo toe may fall.
There were nice touches, subtle lighting and shit, but that was it. Here though?
Fuck me sideways.
The lift doors opened onto a scene of chaos. At least a dozen young men and women of several races, but all fucking stunning and fully naked, frolicked in a massive pool. A handful of older, considerably uglier and fatter men and women lounged about on luxury recliners, watching the younger models at play with avaricious eyes.
I stepped out onto the floor. A veritable wave of warm salty air hit me, like the heat of summer in the slums, but without the oppressive stench that inevitably came with it.
Instead, there was a scent of salt water, coconuts and vanilla, fruity drinks, and yeah, sex.
The entrances to the apartments on this floor were around the outside, dotted here and there among palm trees that swayed in generated breezes. The five massive apartments cut into the floor space, but still left a damn good-sized area for the pool, one that had little bridges crisscrossing narrow “rivers” and leading to the rooms.
I started around to the left, heading to the second apartment, eyes locked on the door like a fucking homing missile. The pleasant wrap of ivy that encircled it and swung in that same breeze only served to piss me off even more.
That these corpo fucks got to play in places like this? That Tyrannus, a fucking turd-swallowing little slimy bastard who’d fucked his own operators over, to earn a measly few credits, got to come here and play as well?
It was more than I could bear.
My fists were clenched so hard in my reinforced armored gloves that I could hear the creaking, and I just plain couldn’t wait to wrap them around his fucking neck.
Ten meters from the door, and my righteous vengeance.
Nine.
Eight, and I could practically taste that excuse for a human being’s cheap aftershave.
Seven.
Six.
I could envisage his face, that little self-satisfied sneer that he always wore.
Five.
The way that he looked down on each and every one of us, those who actually had to work for a living.
Four.
That he’d risked us, our lives, while he sat in his corpo bribing-earned office, while better men and women died in the dirt, and he ate fucking canapes.
Three.
He’d known what was going on.
Two.
He’d known that we were going to be hit by the shark, and he made fucking sure that Blue Team was gone, so that he could kill us.
One.
He gave us no notice—not for the job, and not before blowing us out of the sky.
Zero.
He was responsible for the deaths of Fergie and Scott; he raped my fucking bank account, and now he was stealing my suit.
Just fucking no.
I reached out with my RI and Key combined, using my wonderful new authority as a company man. I popped the door open and stepped inside, closing the door behind me gently with shaking hands.
My eyes adjusted to the darkness of the room, seeing the strewn empty bottles of booze I’d never been able to afford, seeing the spilled liquids, food trays, and more, dumped wherever, uncaring.
I heard the steady snoring from the bedroom ahead, and I strode across the marble floor, glass crunching underfoot.
The bedroom door was slightly ajar, and I pushed it open with the tip of the arse-lance, taking in the room beyond.
The rear wall was all glass, showing the city in all her neon glory. The left side of the room was covered in closets, seating areas, and an entrance to what appeared to be a dressing room. A fucking sex swing hung limp in the middle of the room.
To the right was a bathroom, the door open, fan still running as it struggled to pull the scent of shit from the air. And straight ahead, between me and the windows?
Three marble steps that rose to a massive bed that could have comfortably slept ten fucking people.
I strode silently up the steps, coming to a halt over Tyrannus, seeing the scrawny little bastard laid there. A line of drool ran from the edge of his mouth. He had thinning, greasy hair and a scraggly few days’ growth covering his cheeks. And somehow, in one of those ways that only the scummiest pretend soldiers could manage, he was both clearly too unfit to pass even the most basic of the exercise requirements for the army, and managed to have a fucking pot belly.
The state of the little shit offended me in every way, and I reached out with my RI.
Privacy Mode: Engaged. All sounds will be suppressed.
The message from the building RI was simple, but broadcast as it was to any inside the marked zone, it woke Tyrannus, who blinked muzzily, trying to figure out what was going on.
“He’s cut off from the network,” Bowdoin assured me, his voice hesitant, as Tyrannus squinted up at me.
I fucking smiled. Reaching up with my right thumb, I flicked the lever, and the lance deployed the impact prongs. My fist tightened around the grip and sent the activation code to the onboard processor.
The room lit with crackling blue electrical discharge, and I stared down at Tyrannus, seeing the confusion morph unto unbridled terror on the little bastard’s face.
Then I hit him.