Chapter Forty-Eight

Six hours.

Six goddamn hours later I was sitting, wrapped in the robes of the Church of the Pure, a handful of the other ‘faithful’ wandering around and making pests of themselves to the various people entering the AWF building.

It was, like the mods they made there, entirely utilitarian, and even boring; squat, oblong, like almost any office block in existence, and with wage slaves slowly tramping their way in and out, heads bowed in defeat.

You could tell the management types and shareholders though, walking in, head held high, while everyone else shuffled along, ready to get their day over with.

I shook my head, wondering how much of their lives they wasted like this, toiling for someone else? I’d been there for half an hour, and I’d been approached by two other ‘faithful’ that seemed surprised by my appearance, and that I wasn’t joining them.

“Special assignment.” I grunted. “Forget you saw me.” They moved off, then went to others of their group and muttered questions, watching me.

I wasn’t exactly blending in, but I was also concealing a lot of mods, and if one of them saw them? The gig was up.

“Enjoying yourself?” Reign asked, sliding onto the public bench next to me, and staring across at the building before us. “Ugly place isn’t it?”

“Guess it doesn’t need credits spending on the outside,” I said. “It’s an R&D, manufactory and warehouse, everything they produce comes from here, so I guess utility over beauty.”

“Just like you.” She sighed, nudging me with a shoulder. “You know, maybe I should trade you in for a better looking model? I hear this Min character is a good looking guy?”

“I’d shoot him in the face,” I assured her, and she laughed.

“So, you’re happy with the plan then?” she asked me again and I shrugged. There really wasn’t much to it in all honesty.

We were to trash the front of the building, draw the security forces out, and then make it all as confusing as possible. Bowdoin would be doing whatever he was doing at the back, and we were the distraction. Basically we should be as noisy and confusing as possible, then run away.

We were wearing the outfits of the Church of the Pure because they were anti-mod fanatics, they spent all day harassing people here and at other mod production sites, and practically everyone hated them already.

They’d tried shit like sticking themselves to the road out the front of the Nemesis factory a few weeks back, and since then they were a little ‘shorthanded’ now—the corpos had used construction clearance equipment to remove them, mainly just leaving smears of blood behind—they were back to a mixture of walking around harassing people, and threatening ‘significant action’.

Nobody really paid them a lot of attention, but they were well known as a lunatic fringe group. They had hardly any control over their own members, and when we claimed we were acting on their behalf? People would just accept it.

Best of all the upper leadership of the church would never really be sure they didn’t do it, so they’d not be convincing in denying any involvement.

The trick was going to be making enough of an impression that it kept everyone’s attention, while not being ‘big’ enough that anyone called in heavy artillery and the army or anti-terrorist units.

That was where Min came in.

He was notorious on his own for essentially ‘fucking and chucking’ as it was called in the army, seducing women and then moving on. That wasn’t a big thing, well, it wasn’t nice, admittedly, but it wasn’t a ‘big’ thing.

What Luna and Gessh wouldn’t tell me about was clearly a lot more than just that though, and judging from the evil smiles they were wearing?

Today was all about revenge for them.

They wouldn’t kill him, but they were making an example of the fucker apparently.

I was fine with it, I’d be setting off the explosives then keeping the rest of their security forces pinned down while they did it.

The fact that two ‘priestesses’ of the church were going to be seen kicking the shit out of the security force leader? It was basically a classic misdirection.

The AWF wouldn’t be sure they were the target, and to add to that impression, they girls were bringing some ‘props’ with them.

“Kabutt?” Reign asked and I nodded.

“Yeah I’m happy with the plan,” I said, shaking my head as I checked the time again. “If we can call it a plan, I mean seriously?”

“It has a start, a middle and an end, and it even has an escape plan in place, it’s better than most of our plans,” she pointed out and I glared at her from the depths of my hood.

“I could be offended by that,” I said eventually. “I’ll have you know I spend a lot of time on my plans.”

“Kabutt, honey, you run at the enemy screaming and beat the crap out of them, then we all run away. It’s fine, you don’t have to pretend any more. We know you were never a planner…”

“I make plans!” I snapped, opening my mouth to point out the last few that had gone so well, and flapped my lips uselessly for a few seconds. “Okay, look, we all lived!”

“All?” she asked, and I thought back to our first mission together.

“That was a bit uncalled for.”

“I know, but seriously? We always escape by the skin of our teeth, this plan? He’s got us escape routes, he’s got fall back positions, and even a timestamp to go on.”

“We always win.”

“That’s because we’re lucky bastards and we believe in heavy firepower,” she pointed out, and I grinned.

“We really do, don’t we?”

“Well, we’ve got five hours after this before Julius wants us at the job, so, Sync and Richie are painting the armor, Luna and Gessh have arranged to meet Dondo to let off some steam, and Todds is going to take his babysitter out to dinner…”

“Uh huh?” I prompted when she fell silent.

“So…?” she suggested, looking at me.

“So… we should do something?”

“That’s it,” she encouraged. “You can do it.”

“We should, uh… go for dinner?” I tried, wincing. “Look, it’s not a good idea to relax too much before a mission, after, sure, but…”

“But we might be pulled down and slaughtered tonight.” She cut me off, shaking her head. “We’re going out for dinner. If we pull this off quickly we’ll have about two hours before we need to leave, you and I are going for dinner, and we’re going to have a goddamn date!”

“Okay,” I agreed quickly, grinning to myself. “All the ammo sorted?”

“That was the delivery before we left to come here,” she said. “Three full cases of ammo, and a box of filters, fusion pellets and more. We’re ready for tonight, okay? There’s even a case of three hundred small medikits, empty and ready to go.”

“So there’s nothing to do?”

“Nothing?” she growled.

“Nothing to stop us relaxing together, I mean,” I corrected.

“Nothing.”

I nodded. “Then I’d like that,” I said quickly. “Of course I’d like to have dinner with you.”

“That’s the right answer,” she said, just as the alarm went off on the timer I’d set.

“Well, looks like it’s the final countdown,” I said, switching back to ‘work mode’ as I shifted on my seat, triggering the tac-net and messaging everyone as Reign stood, moving off quickly.

“Okay people, five minutes,” I said, smiling to myself as I felt the cares and worries fall away.

It was always like this, I felt distracted and worried about all the things that could go wrong before a mission started, but once it was on? That was it.

I also liked, admittedly, the fun new toys we’d ordered from both Oshbob and Gunther for this little job. Bowdoin hadn’t liked the bill, but fuck it.

I set off strolling towards the building, the pair of guards out the front focusing on me and straightening, knowing that they couldn’t let ‘one of the nutters’ inside.

I smiled, crossing the street, heading towards the front door… then turning right and walking along the front of the building, just before they could take action.

They hesitated, then stood down, watching me, as I in turn watched them, the link from Reign’s sniper rifle popping up in my HUD and making my shoulders relax.

This was always the worst bit, if some ACE patrol or security team came past? Or worse yet, some anti-terrorist scanners registered what I had in the backpack over my shoulder? That’d kick all this off far sooner.

Fortunately it was half an hour after shift change, so there were few people wandering about outside, and with the dour glares the church ‘real’ priests and supporters were giving them? People moved off fast.

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I moved along the front, the map Bowdoin had provided keeping me right as I counted my steps to the right spot.

“Here we go,” I muttered, grinning to myself as I swung the bag off my shoulder, triggered the sealing charges—sticky panels that sealed something to something else—and triggered the directional explosives.

Not to detonate, not yet, but I slapped the bag against the wall, making it stick with a wet ‘splat’ before the air between the wall and bag was forced out, sealing it tight.

The explosives beeped in my HUD letting me know they were active, and ready, and I moved quickly, striding back away from the building, before picking up speed as I returned to my seat, a long stone bench that Luna was standing behind now, and Gessh taking up post behind another seat a dozen meters away.

“You ready for this?” I asked her, getting a massive smile, and I shook my head. We were all wearing masks, specialist ones that were intended for parties more than anything, those ‘special’ parties where people wore very little clothing, and bowls full of room keys were offered round.

They were black and oval, hiding your real face entirely, unless you had the scrambling code. We all had them, letting each of us see the others fine, but to anyone that looked under our hoods?

We looked like a particularly hated corpo leader, ‘the evil one that shall not be named’ from M-Corp. The title was from a recent skit on a comedy channel, and it was doing the rounds.

She’d predictably had her own version edited up and released, cutting and pasting sections of the conversation until it looked like she was the innocent one, being bullied, instead of the evil creature she was, but nobody was fooled.

As the timer hit the last few seconds, I turned and stared at the building ahead, and sighed.

“Some days I fucking love my job, you know that?” I said philosophically to nobody in particular, before triggering the detonator.

The seismic charges were designed to crack stone in mining, reducing sections of solid stone to sand, and they were packed in at the bottom, flush against the wall.

Atop them were packed a trio of pulse detonators, essentially, where the first level would turn a section of about two meters into sand, the pulse detonators would send out a wave that would crack all the walls nearby into shards, taking that section of the building down.

It'd do minor damage to flesh, pretty major damage to machinery, and coincidentally, absolutely bury the security team’s armory under several tons of building.

That left only the quick response team, and the guards at the front.

As soon as the explosion had gone off, Luna and Gessh had lifted up their new toys, and had opened fire.

The guards were stunned by the explosion and had been looking in totally the wrong direction when they did so, and when the first few hits landed?

It was all over for them.

A single hit from a Riot Suppression [Non-Lethal] Electro-Impact Lance, or RSEIL, was fucking painful, the three the girls managed to hit the pair with?

Well, the arse-lance, as it was more affectionately known, was slightly tempered by the armor they were wearing, but as each rubberized, electrified round hit them, they just danced more and more.

Some might say ‘dancing’ was the wrong word, but they shook and jerked, then fell over, and really, that was close enough for my mind.

I hoped they’d not killed the guards, that was why we’d gone for these weapons, after all, but two was probably not enough to do the job, with their armor, so I’d agreed to three hits as a maximum.

Now we waited.

The real purity priests had run like their arses were on fire, along with most people on the street, and I got a message from Reign a few seconds later, who promised the guest of honor was on his way.

“I’ll take that,” I said to Luna, taking her toy from her as she hefted the jury rigged party gifts, and started to count.

“And throw on three…” Reign spoke into the comms. “One, two… three!”

As she spoke, five figures, two of them only partially dressed, came running out of the breech in the wall, handguns up and aiming. Luna threw the grenades, and I took aim as well, firing a half second after Gessh did, then the three of us ducked down and hid behind the stone bench.

“You ready for this?” I asked Luna conversationally, as she lifted the final new toy, locking the pistons and charging handle.

“I have never been more ready for anything in my life,” she assured me, grinning, ear to ear, as bullets slammed into the stone on the far side, blasting chips free, but doing little real damage. Had they been able to lay hands on their much heavier riot loadout? It’d have been a very different story.

“You know, I’m going to have to get more intel on future raids.” I mused. “All the stress for this one, it’s just gone…”

The detonation of the two grenade bundles were almost overpowered by the screams from the five that were caught in the blast, and I stood again, turning to look over the bench, rifle raised... and I paused, then relaxed a little.

All five had been caught in the blast radius, the stunners, the stickies and the flashbangs had done their jobs, landing on either side of the charging group and taking them down in screaming, sticky piles.

The slick grenade that Gessh had thrown a few seconds before had helped as well, as it meant that rather than the idiots being stuck to the floor, they were instead stuck to themselves, arms and legs pinned, even as they thrashed and bucked.

Luna took careful aim, then fired her rifle, the harpoon flashing over the distance between us and her target, then punching through his thigh, deploying the barbs, and beginning to retract as she braced herself.

Min was dragged kicking and screaming, his arms glued to his chest, across the slick floor, ending up nearby as I turned to Luna.

“I’ve got it from here,” I assured her. “You go have fun.”

“Thanks boss!” she shouted. “You’re the best!”

With that she was off, running over to him and punting him hard in the balls, before applying the solvent to counter the glue.

Gessh was there a few seconds later, deploying a hardened glass shield around the chosen point, making damn sure that unless the enemy brought out heavy weaponry, the sisters could finish the job.

Then the pair of them fell on Min.

I ignored them, as they stripped and beat the crap out of him behind the shield, keeping the second wave of guards pinned down with repeated shots from the arse-lance.

I wasn’t hitting them, but without access to their main armory, they weren’t hitting me either, and all I needed was to keep their attention.

Between my suppression fire, and the beating the girls were giving Min, the minutes ticked away fast, but still, it wasn’t until the pair of them flipped him upside down and were busily duct-taping him to their chosen light pole, before starting to write on him, as I threw the omni-directional speaker towards the hunkered down defenders, and triggered it.

“Hold your ground!” I barked. “This is an intervention on both religious grounds, and we are covered by sub section seventeen of the protest bill, if you interfere with us, you will be fined by the religious council, and fired upon by the Enforcers of the Church of the Pure!”

“What?” one of them shouted out after a few seconds. “What the fuck! You blew up our building!”

“It was a religious explosive,” I threw back at him. “It was blessed!”

“What are you doing to our captain?” he shouted back.

“Punishment for his sins!”

“For his… just for him?” came the response. “You did all of this, to get at him?”

“Justice knows no limit!” I replied, settling in, making shit up as I went along. “His guilt was established long since, not only for the terrible events of the Summer of Perdition, but for his support of the devil’s work!”

I had no idea what the summer of perdition was, but I’d seen it mentioned on some of holograms the lunatics had been projecting and it fit with the whole judgy theme that was going on.

“Are… are you going to kill him?” came the call.

“No, not unless you try to stop us carrying out justice!”

“What’s that?”

“Justice?”

“No, what they’ve got, that…. is that a flag?”

I looked over at the girls, they’d given me a vague idea of their plans, but that was all, and they’d certainly not mentioned a flag until now, but as Luna looked over at me and gave the flag a jaunty little wave I could barely suppress a mixture of the giggles… and a wince.

“It is!” I assured them.

“What are you going to…. Oh! Damn!” I heard a squeal ring out, even through the gag they’d put on him, and I couldn’t help but look back over at him.

He was taped—upside down—to the pole, naked, with a dozen slogans scrawled on him, including a print of a dancing cat that was popular on kids shows at the minute in the center of his admittedly muscular chest.

His legs were dangling, as were other bits, and they’d been sprayed silver and pink.

Then a flag, one of the little ones that were meant for mounting to your aircar—if you were a religious nutjob and could still afford one—had been… yup.

The girls had stuck it in his ass.

There was a little breeze that raced around the plaza and that made it stream and dance, as both the girls stood back to admire their handiwork.

“Turn this way!” I called to them, and they did, as I focused, then order the RI to take a selection of recordings, as the girls saluted me.

With that, we had less than a minute to go, and distant sirens could be heard, as I stood, passing the guns to the girls, and we started retreating.

By the time we reached the edge of the plaza, the timer was up, the guards were racing towards their fallen leader, and the sirens were a lot closer.

We darted into the marked building on our map, then into the basement, and sub basements, following the glowing route that we’d been given, and much to my surprise found the door ahead of us into the Undercity unlocked and ready.

We darted through, Reign and Todds joining us, and the five of us sealed the door, dumped the incriminating evidence, set the incendiary grenade off, and ran for it.

An hour later we were in the aircab, flashing through the air to the warehouse, and I was sending the images and recording to Bowdoin, noting that there were already several images circulating online already, and to be out this quickly? They had to have been released by his own people.

Yeah, Min’s reputation was toast.

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