Chapter Forty-Nine

By the time we’d all gotten back, calmed down, separated out the payment and gotten changed and ready, Reign and I ended up enjoying a romantic pizza while I worked on an issue with the transverse mechanism on the left ankle for my suit, and she worked on attaching a new scope to her new toy.

It was a railgun, not a little one either, the full on, must be braced and locked down, with a tripod level of rifle, and while I didn’t know when she was going to use it, beyond when we went hunting the APS, the sight of her smile as she cleaned and fitted it, and Sync gushed over it, was enough for me.

We might not have made it to dinner, but we’d damn well made it through the day, and we were ready for a wild ride of a night.

“Are you sure you won’t need us?” Gessh asked me for the third time, and I gestured to Julius, who stood by the leg of one of the APS, staring upwards, mouth open in stunned awe.

They’d all been repainted in a day, the minor repairs done, the major ones either fixed enough or put off till another day, meaning that we were as ready as we possibly could be.

Admittedly we needed a transport to be able to get there, but once again, Julius had delivered, showing up personally in it, dressed as if ready to go either onto a stage, or into war, everything from his hair to his guns perfect.

“I think we’ll need you for the cleanup, but he really wants this to be just the three of us I think,” I apologized. “Don’t worry, it’ll still be shared equally.”

“Oh, it’s not that.” She grinned. “Although I’ll not complain, no I just wanted to know if you needed us, or if I could get Dondo round to really finish the day off in style, you know, with you all out for a while?”

“Someone talking about me?” Dondo called from the door, and I turned, annoyed he’d just wandered up—meaning there was still a remaining backdoor in the security software I’d not found, but I would, I resolved silently—only to find that the fucker wasn’t alone either.

Clearly he’d shared the exploit with his fucking boss.

“Oshbob,” I greeted him, trying my best not to sound defensive or aggressive, as if I expected him.

“Kabutt,” the big bastard grunted, barely looking my way. “I heard you’d had some friends move into my warehouse, decided it was time to check the place out.”

“Yeah,” I muttered. “I think we need to have a conversation about the options here. Either we need to buy this place or we need to be looking for somewhere else.”

“Your people told me that you were asking… it’s not for sale.” He shrugged and I glared at him. “Might be that we can come to an arrangement, but I don’t sell my property. Might be that having some operators I can call on for a job now and then would be worth reconsidering your rent though…”

“The rent isn’t the issue,” I said. “The issue is investment. I’m not leaving our suits here unguarded when we’re off the clock, unless I have some serious hardware protecting them.”

“Makes sense, don’t see the problem though.”

“The problem is I’m not investing serious credits in security unless it’s our place. What’s to stop you deciding that you want the place back as soon as I’ve invested a few hundred thousand in security?”

“Self-interest,” he replied bluntly, stomping over to me and jerking his head to one side, leading me off for a quiet chat in the corner.

“What’s all this about?” I asked him warily.

“As I said, Kabutt, self-interest.” He leaned against the wall and looked over the suits. “I’ve heard they’re locked to the user, can’t be used by anyone else, ever, so why would people try and boost them?”

“They’re locked to the user,” I agreed. “There’s a possible way around that, but it’d cost millions.”

“And?”

“And what?”

“And you’re worried that others would still steal the suits, so clearly there’s those that don’t care about the cost, so how does it work?”

“That’s classified,” I growled. “Look, just because they can’t be stolen, unless you’ve got serious credits behind you, like corpo level credits, doesn’t mean that assholes won’t try, and in trying they’ll trash my place and waste my credits. Also, yeah, corpo scumbags might try for them. I don’t need that shit. I need to rebuild the site, make it into a real fortified home for us.”

“So do it.” He grunted. “Look Kabutt, I don’t give a shit if you tear this place down and rebuild it from the ground up, this is still mine…” He paused, eyeing me, and I glared at him, until he shrugged and went on. “That being said, maybe having dangerous neighbors would be worth a little consideration in the deal.”

“Such as?”

“Such as this is mine …” He squinted at me, making sure I got that, and I nodded, before he went on. “But maybe a set rent for the next five years, regardless of your investment could be agreed. If I need you, you come and help—”

“I’m not owing another gang lord favors.”

“Shut the fuck up and listen,” he snapped. “If I need you, like I get hit by a competitor? You come help. In return? You get raided? My people view it as my property. They’ll defend it, and they fucking know not to mess with my shit. No goblins trying to break in and see what they can scrounge, no gang members trying to fuck with you. You get guards, and I get some security, if the shit hits the fan.”

“I…” I broke off, forcing myself to think through the offer.

It wasn’t actually that bad. If I moved to another site, as well as having to buy the site? We’d have to start from scratch. We’d be a permanent target for idiots, gangers that think they can just jump in and steal a suit, like that fucknut a few years back that had stolen a training mech.

He'd been ground into the floor for it, but for a short while he’d been a ganger king.

I’d have shit heads like that trying stuff all the time, we’d need guards round the clock, and we’d certainly need to invest hundreds of thousands in security.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

We’d also have Dondo hanging around, I had no doubt, and as much as he clearly liked the girls and wanted to be with them, he was Oshbob’s through and through. If he ordered him to add security back doors, he’d be sneaking around when we were all in bed doing just that.

That meant that the option was that if we got another place, we’d have to ban him, and that’s wouldn’t be right, considering that it’d not be ‘mine’ it’d be ‘ours’.

We had the guild of course, and we were to be partial owners there, but, realistically, nothing was going to happen with the guild moving to a bigger site that could accommodate the suits and so on in the short term, and even if Julius offered it tomorrow?

Would we want to live in a guild house? I sure as shit didn’t intend living far from my suit either. I wanted it close enough I could reach it when I needed it.

No, we needed a stable home, a safe one, and the simple truth was that I’d have a hell of a job sorting somewhere else out that came with the advantages of this one.

Having Oshbob’s people watching over us, instead of regarding us as prey? That was worth a hell of a lot.

“We’d be allies?” I asked after a few seconds.

“We would,” he agreed. “I don’t like you, but I’m willing to overlook how ugly you are, for Dondo and the girls sake of course.”

“I can understand that,” I replied. “I don’t like that I can smell you even from across the road, but I could put up with it, for the girls sake.”

“Then we’ve got a deal.” He grunted. “Oh, and as we’ll be allies?”

“Yeah?”

“No need to worry about dealing with others to get your fuel core and ammo supplies. I already had a word with Gunther about selling on my turf. He knows to give you a little discount from now on.”

“Downright kind of you,” I ground out between gritted teeth.

“Don’t mention it.” He grinned, a little twinkle in the big bastard’s eye. “There’s a little gift as well… something to make life a little easier.” He tossed me a small box and I caught it automatically, then set it down, not trusting the fucker.

He strolled back to the others, and I forced myself to relax, breathing deeply, as Reign stepped up and laid a hand on my arm.

“You look like you’re going to explode.” She winced. “Is everything okay?”

“It is.” I swallowed my anger, and forced a deep breath down, shaking my head and nodding to her. “No, it’s okay, it’s just that he always has to get one over on me, you know?”

“He’s a crime lord, they don’t get to that position without skills,” she pointed out. “What’s happening?”

“He offered a deal on the site, but it stays ‘his’. He’ll also have his people beaten into shape and it made clear that we’re not prey, we’re his allies, and not to fuck with us, as well as have them as security and troops if the shit hits the fan.”

“Damn, that’s good!” She blinked in surprise. “So what’s got you so pissed?”

“In exchange, if he gets raided by another gang or whatever, we help him.”

“The girls would have insisted on helping Dondo anyway,” she said, and I nodded.

“I know, and if we went somewhere else he’d be setting his boss up to get access to our systems if we didn’t ban him.”

“Exactly, so…”

“He also agrees with us doing whatever we want with the place, including a full flatten and rebuild if we want.”

“That’s great…”

“But he owns it.”

“Uh huh?”

“And…” I shook my head. “The thing that really pisses me off? Him having control over us. He’s gotten to Gunther, he knew we were buying supplies for the suits from him, so he’s had a word and we now get a ‘discount’ on Gunther supplying us.”

“That’s…” She broke off seeing the point.

It wasn’t the discount, it wasn’t even that Gunther was only supplying us a few bits and pieces. It was that Oshbob was making it clear he had his fingers in everything and that he was powerful enough to make an old friend—more or less—who’d been giving us a decent deal, not only discount the deal he was giving us further, but that he knew about it. He was making it clear we bought from him, or we didn’t buy from another merchant.

“Did he mention the Stingers?” she asked after a few seconds and I shook my head.

“No, and I think they’re free of his influence, they’re powerful enough that if he fucked with them they’d squash him, and fuck the consequences. Also, if they had him covering for them, they’d not have been hiding where they were. I’m betting Lucky never told him.”

“Well, that’s something,” she said. “Also, what we do is stock up. We run a decent supply of everything here, so that if he does try to turn the screws and fuck with us? We can crush him. Remember that he’s seen the vids like everyone else, APS stomping across the battlefield and slaughtering armies. Use tonight, use it as a warning for him as well.”

“I like the way you think.” I grinned. “We make it into warning, as well as a recruitment and advertising vid for the guild.”

“Exactly.” She smiled at me and interlinked her arm, squeezing my hand and kissing my cheek. “So, you ready to go play nice for a few minutes before we leave?”

“I am,” I agreed, before an evil thought occurred to me. “Actually… he wants us to be allies? Let’s use that.”

“You’ve got an evil smile…” She sighed. “This is so going to cost us…”

“No, it’s more in the nature of a loan,” I assured her.

“From a crime syndicate? Oh that sounds like such a good idea…”

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