Chapter Forty

All told it took two hours for us to drink several cups of coffee each, to visit the facilities, to visit the vault and then to finally leave the research base.

They were conducting experiments there on the interface between nanites and the mods, and the reasons that specters came about. Basically looking for a silver bullet, something that was there in all of them.

They’d found fuck all so far, but knowing the world the way I did, I guessed this was some corpo tax write off more than a serious research plan.

The slow rotation on the racks apparently calmed the specters, they’d tried keeping them in various different ways over the years, but this was the latest, best version.

The majority of the staff bore us absolutely no ill will for neither the damage to the security bots—they were there to stop the specters if they broke loose somehow—nor for the specters we’d killed.

They had drones which would repair the facility, and enough security drones still that the ones that we’d destroyed were a loss they could take, and their leader had contacted the sponsoring corporation.

They apparently didn’t care that we were down there, though they weren’t happy about the damage to the facility and viewed the whole thing as a governmental botch job when we explained—bullshitting for all we were worth—that we were being paid to sweep the area.

They warmed up to us a lot though when they realized that it was our team that had caught the banshee. Suddenly, provided we agreed to give ‘Hari-BalliGag-Systems’ first refusal at any banshee data or banshees themselves that we got access to, then we were considered ‘fellow professionals’

An agreement was struck that we would keep our mouth shut, and they would let us kill the ‘broken’ specters they couldn’t make use of, in the vault, and claim them as ‘free range’ specters.

Reign, in a stroke of fucking genius, claimed we were being paid to retrieve any mods at tier three or above for research into the models, looking for commonality or some such shit.

We demanded those, and were told that the corpo didn’t give two fucks officially, and that for a small fee we could remove a certain percentage of the bodies in the racks that held tier three.

We settled on ten thousand as a ‘thank you’ to cover the restocking costs, and the corpo dickhead cut the line as soon as the payment was received through his system.

The end result was that we emerged from the hunt on the far side with few medikits filled—we couldn’t risk them seeing what we were doing and so hadn’t dared to use the harvester—but with no less than fifteen tier three and four tier four mods in the bag.

That would have made it worthwhile in itself, but we deliberately moved off through the tunnels on the far side of the lab, and spent the next who knew how many hours harvesting where we could.

The first location was a disappointment, apparently the traps were working well, and the usual wandering idiot brigade—that weren’t snapped up to be politicians or lawyers—had already been caught and loaded onto frames.

That meant that when we found them, the specters were few and far between, with Todds eventually slinking off ahead of us, leaving sections of the wall scratched to show which way he’d gone, while we set up a kill zone.

It wasn’t hard to be fair, the sheer amount of random rubbish that had somehow found its way down here meant that there were literally more building materials than we knew what to do with.

We made small trip hazards, strung razorwire here and there, and made killing fields by strategically placing barriers to funnel the specters into certain areas.

The next hour was notable mainly by the fucking boredom we all felt, Todds roamed far and wide finding the specters and dragging them back in small groups for us to kill, and mainly Reign, Luna and Gessh and I talked and joked.

“Seriously, you’ve never heard anything like it.” I sighed. “The noise that the little bastard made when Fergie caught him trying to steal that double bass and punted him in the balls? Ah good times.” I grinned sadly, shaking my head in fond remembrance.

“Sounds like your experience of the army was a lot different from ours,” Luna grunted. “Seriously, even half orcs don’t get the level of respect of ‘normal’ troops, we were generally sent on the shittiest missions, over and over again, I’d have happily stabbed our C/O any day of the week.”

“I think most of us feel that way, when we’re in service.” I muttered, dragging the latest body over to the pile and starting work on it.

“You feel any differently now you’re out?” Reign asked curiously and I snorted.

“Don’t be daft. I’d shoot Tyrannus in the face right now if I could, even knowing the major was behind all that shit, shooting us down and sending us out there to get killed in the first place I mean. That he wasn’t quite as much of a shit as I thought he was? Well, you’ve gotta remember that he was—”

“Incoming!” Todds bellowed into the tac-net, and we could hear him pounding the ground as he came.

“Todds?” I asked quickly. “What’s going on?”

“Something changed!” he snapped. “I took a corner and found a fucking wall of them coming at me!”

“How many?” I asked, gesturing the others to take their places.

“Fucking hundreds!”

“How the hell?” I grunted. “Fuck it, just get back here asap, we’ll be ready,” I said, glancing at the others. “Get ready people, you heard the same shit I did.”

“Ready,” Gessh said, nodding and grinning to her sister. “Sooner we kill these fuckers, sooner we get some Dondo.”

“He’s no longer a person then?” Reign laughed. “You two planning on being ‘Dondo’d’ tonight?”

“He was never a person,” Luna assured her. “Believe me, he’s a walking delivery system for a weapon of mass pleasure, that’s it.”

“Well, I wasn’t going to comment on how little conversation you guys enjoy together, you know besides ‘do me like that’ and so on,” Reign replied grinning.

“Honestly, are we just meat to you?” I asked, shaking my head in mock sadness.

“No, don’t worry dear,” Reign assured me, racking a round in the sniper rifle and checking the line of sight as we got ready. “We only treat certain people like that.”

“Just the ones that are really, really good at it,” Luna pointed out. “You know they could prescribe him as a cure for depression? ‘Take Dondo twice a day, you’ll be fine’ and shit like that.”

“Yeah, except you’d never be able to walk it off.” Gessh shook her head. “Seriously boss, don’t beat yourself up about it, Reign likes you for more than just that, personality, and… well… other stuff. Probably.”

“I’d have to really,” Reign agreed, setting her gear out.

“You know, it’s a good job I’m not self-conscious,” I growled. “You fuckers could give me issues.”

“You love us really.” Reign laughed. “So Luna, how much does an anti-depression treatment cost, you know, for a friend.”

“Todds,” I said into the tac-net, speaking over the chuckles. “I’m really in need of something to kill, alright?”

“I’ve got you there boss!” He assured me, his breath whistling as he tore along distant passages.

Two minutes later he finally made it out ahead of us, weaving in and out of the cleared lines of approach. He’d barely reached us, skidding to a halt and bent over, hands on his knees panting as he tried to get his breath back, when the first of those that were chasing him came into view in the distance.

“What the hell did you do?” I asked, stunned, as Reign opened fire, taking a ghoul in the distance down before it could direct those around it,

“Nothing!” Todds swore, straightening and pointing. “I literally… took a corner… and boom, there they were… right in front of me… hundreds walking in lines.”

“Lines?”

“They were… searching for something… I’m betting,” he forced out.

“Searching for…” I broke off, looking at my left arm as I put the pieces together. “The banshee. It was tracking the original tech, maybe us harvesting the specters does something, gives off a signal or something?” I guessed, before shaking my head and dismissing it.

“Well, maybe that’ll make the harvesting easier then!” Reign suggested. “Less searching around?”

“Or more dangerous,” I said, starting firing, single shots, leading the target and firing as the specters ran at us.

There were enough that when I missed one, a second behind them tended to ‘catch’ the round for me instead.

Luna and Gessh opened fire, as did Todds, and the real job for the day started all over again.

When we finally trooped out into the dim morning light, filthy, stinking and exhausted? We’d filled our medikits, we’d emptied most of our magazines and we were the proud—if temporary—owners of a hundred and seven mods, ranging from tier two to four.

The flight from where we emerged, back to the warehouse was mainly in silence, we’d spread out, myself and Reign in the one with all the mods and medikits, the girls and Todds in our own aircar, with Dondo flying them.

When we landed, all of us headed together over to see Oshbob, Dondo making us wait in the warehouse as he apparently discussed things with his boss, and I took it that the fact we’d shown up with a fuck load of gear ready for him was a bit of a surprise, all things considered.

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Just over two hundred small medikits were full, ready to be handed over, and because I wasn’t goddamn stupid, a further thirty-seven were full in another bag, ready for us to store them, along with all the medium and large kits, as I was fucked if I was handing them over.

Between the seventeen hundred and eighty-six specters we’d managed to kill over almost an entire goddamn day in the depths, we’d earned a grand total of fifty credits per specter, which came to eighty-nine thousand, three hundred credits.

That the guild was receiving the same amount as we were registered through them was a pain in the ass, but at least it made damn sure that Julius was going to be on our side over everything.

Then add on the hundred grand in medikits, at half the retail value to Oshbob that was, and finally, the guns and mods? I was very sure that I was going to be walking away with the parts I needed for my suit one way or the other.

The orc eventually made his way down to meet us in the warehouse, ignoring me entirely, as he smiled at and spoke to the sisters first.

Knowing that the arrogant fuckstick hated humans, I’d already suggested I take a step back, and Gessh was running point on this now, separating the arms out from the legs, laying them side by side on the floor where Oshbob could see them.

He moved through the pile, checking things over, occasionally muttering things to a pair that followed him along, some crazy looking goblin and a carver, the pair seemingly inches away from utter madness as they picked and kicked the goods.

“Where?” the goblin asked suddenly, looking at me.

“Where what?” I asked, despite my previous determination to leave this to the girls to sort.

“Where the rest?”

“The rest of what?” I asked, confused.

“Rest of bodies!” He sighed, shaking his head. “You leave? This many bodies just left?”

“There’s a few thousand of them,” I said. “We spent a full goddamn day in the depths, we left the bodies, and we left the shitty mods, no sense in hauling them around.”

“He’s got a point,” the carver added, straightening with a hand held in his, looking over the connectors as he spoke absently. “That many corpses moldering under a section of the city will bring disease. I hope you reported the location to a clean-up crew?”

“Totally,” I lied.

“Give location,” the goblin said quickly. “We go, make sure, for good of city.”

“You’ve not got the time to be dealing with that.” Oshbob grunted at the goblin.

“Old d—” the goblin started to complain, before shutting up at the glare the orc gave him, then glaring at me as if I was somehow to blame for all of this.

“So,” Oshbob growled. “You expect me to just what? Magic more parts up for your suit out of my arse?”

“You said you could do it, that it’d cost a hundred thousand per section. I’m missing from both legs the main actuators, the jump jets and lower shielding. Then the exterior main armoring, both railguns on shoulder swivel mounts, the standard assault rifle and ammo feeds, rear storage compartment, one arm and the cluster bomb dispensers, as well as three plasma swords.”

I saw the squint as he worked through that lot in his head and I spoke up quickly. “The legs will be together,” I told him. “That fucker Tyrannus must have stripped it for parts before arranging transport, nobody else could have done this. The legs are complete units, so they’d be kept together.”

I made the point that I knew how this had happened and that he was essentially buying back my own fucking parts from whoever Tyrannus had sold them to, because I had no doubt the sneaky orc would be adding on a cut for himself. I didn’t need him charging a hundred grand per part, not when they were sections of the same thing.

“So the legs are two hundred,” he said, counting on one hand, as if to mock me. “The exterior armoring, the railguns, the rifle…”

“With its feed, it’s all interlinked, they’d not be selling it as a separate unit,” I lied.

“That’s five hundred thousand so far, plus the arm, the storage compartment, then—”

“The cluster-bomb dispensers are less than twenty grand a pair, so they won’t be expensive,” I added grimly.

“The cluster-bombs, we’ll see what the price is on those, plus three swords…” He paused, scratching at his chin and pretending to be lost in thought. “We’ll call it eight hundred thousand.”

“You’re fucking kidding me.” I growled. “Eight hundred grand? I’ve already paid—”

“Nothing compared to what the suit’s worth, never mind the parts.” He cut me off. “You want to go to someone else for this? Fine, fuck off. See how far you get.” He sneered.

I took a step forward, hand dropping to my side, the hilt of the plasma sword feeling warm against my palm as he held a hand out to the side, presumably stopping someone, though I didn’t know or care who.

“Listen you fucking asshole, we made a deal…”

“Yeah, we did,” he agreed. “You’d provide me with parts and with nanites, now you finally turn up with them, and I tell you how much I’m charging? The price was a couple of hundred grand, depending on the parts, remember? You keep this shit up? It’s a million.”

“I’m not paying that.” I growled at him.

“Then fuck off and buy from someone else.”

“Fine,” I said grimly. “Luna, Gessh…”

“These stay here.” Oshbob ordered. “As do the nanites, call it compensation for breaking the deal.”

“I’m not breaking the fucking deal! You…”

“You want to renegotiate?” He snorted. “Not happening. Now, you want these parts or not?”

“Yeah, I do.” I growled at him, and he nodded, turning to speak to the carver again.

I had no idea what his problem was, he moved from telling me to fuck off, to selling me shit, to warning me, to seemingly dismissing me, while Dondo and some Goblins carrying a bunch of boxes out from the back of the room.

He set them down on the table with a grunt, making me look over as I saw Dondo pull a covering off the box, showing parts of the railgun mountings to me, as I nodded my thanks to him.

“The parts are worth half a mil to me,” Oshbob said eventually, and I glared at him.

“The lowest spec is a tier two at fourteen grand. The tier fours?” I shook my head. “I don’t even know what the fuck they’re worth, but its more than that!”

“Sure, but I can’t sell them at that price. Ex-Specter parts, remember?” He shrugged.

“And if I go to one of your chop-shops and see these on sale they’ll be clearly marked as that, and discounted will they?” I asked, glaring at him.

“I’m just a supplier.” He smiled crookedly. “I don’t force the shops to sell their gear my way…”

“Bullshit.”

“You taking it or not?”

“Half a million,” I agreed, furious but knowing the big fuck held all the cards here. “Plus two hundred more for the medikits and nanites.

“A hundred,” he snapped, back at me. “That puts you in my debt for, oh two hundred grand. Got it handy?” He smiled, clearly expecting the answer to be no.

“I do.” I replied. “And once I’ve seen the rest of the gear you’ll get it.”

He blinked, then growled, indicating I was to open the boxes and check it out.

Most of the parts were scratched and battered, bright fresh paint marred in sections where they’d been dumped one atop the other, and I cursed under my breath as I worked, borrowing a handheld console from Todds and plugging into the units, one by one.

After a few minutes I turned back, staring at the orc.

“How much are you charging me for the plasma swords?” I asked.

“Ninety,” he replied, looking up from an argument with the goblin again. “Why?”

“Because they’re not here.”

“The…” He broke off, looking at the goblin who shook his head. “Seems they’ve not arrived yet,” he growled. “Next time you tell me that shit, you little bastard.”

“Well, till they’re here I’m not paying for them,” I said, and he waved me off, uncaring. I reached out, ‘knocking’ and getting the response from his account as I transferred a hundred and ten thousand, then reached for the nearest box. “Tell me when they arrive and I’ll pay then.”

“Whatever.” He shrugged. “Dondo will give you the list,” he said casually, turning away and stalking across the floor as he left us.

“List?” I called after him.

“Remember the deal, human! You deliver the nanites where I say!”

I turned to Dondo, seeing the wide grin on his face, as he transferred the list to me.

Checking it over, I started swearing under my breath, then gave up on that and cursed that goblin-fucker loud and proud.

He had me literally travelling over half the goddamn city! Some of these chop-shops were literally getting a single small medikit from me, a single kit, and I just knew it was deliberate, done only for the fucking pleasure of that bastard sending me running all over the place!

“Luna, Gessh,” I said, turning to them, only to have Dondo cut me off.

“I’ll help you carry these parts over to the warehouse you’re renting if you want. I know Oshbob wants you to deliver these kits personally, so you’d not want him to double the price of the swords because you got others to do it for you, would you?”

I glared at him, knowing the fucker was making sure he could get his end away while I was working, but I swallowed it, when I saw the looks on Gessh and Luna’s faces.

They’d helped me to do this, all of them, and now they were really hoping for the downtime I’d promised them. They’d worked and fought all day to earn all of this to pay for my suit, I couldn’t take that away from them.

“Of course not,” I snarled, grabbing one of the bags. “That was the deal.”

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