“Incoming!” Luna barked back, following her in and dropping to her knees by my side, checking me over. “Medikits!” she yelled at me, and I patted my right thigh pocket that I’d been fumbling with.

She tore the medium medikit out. Twin injection ports on the bottom sparkled as she uncovered them, then stabbed it into my upper chest like she was staking a fucking vampire, just with shitty aim.

The injector hissed and the nanites boiled out of the end, hitting the wounds and expanding. The pain was horrific, even more so when Luna dug a finger into one of the wounds, then another, checking them, before grabbing my shoulder and straightening it up, holding it more or less in place for the nanites to start work.

Reign backed through the hole, her rifle booming as she took down people trying to follow her.

“H…here!” I grunted, then coughed blood, shaking with the pain as I pressed the hacker into Luna’s palm. “Get it done!”

She nodded, twisting and searching the room quickly. She was up and running a few seconds later, sprinting to the far end where a massive server rack stood, the door ajar, fortunately for us. I assumed that they’d been in the process of doing something when we’d come through the wall, as the explosives dotted around couldn’t be good. But even as I stared, Gessh yanked detonators out of the mass, tossing them into a secure explosives drawer.

It might not be enough, but considering they’d clearly been rigging the server stack? It might yet work. Either way, though, as Gessh yanked the explosives free, she uncovered a small port in the side of the server, and Luna plugged the cracker in.

As Bowdoin had warned us when he coded it, it should work, but it was also written on the fly, by a hacker without access to the target, and so it had a lot of IF/THEN written into it, and warnings that although it might work, it also might fucking not at all.

It’d been a seriously warning-laden deal as he handed the crackers over, basically saying that he’d done his best and if it didn’t work, it wasn’t his fault.

Now, though, as the server went into overdrive and the lights across the entire floor flickered and went dim, I cursed. The turrets outside had ceased firing, true, but that might be because they were programmed to fire only on assholes without a certain ID or because nobody was in their line of sight right now.

I didn’t know, and I wasn’t going to stand in front of them to find out.

“How you doing, boss?” Reign called down to me.

I snarled as I forced myself to my feet. My left arm lifted and locked onto the strap of the rifle, rolling over from my right.

“I’m functional,” I forced out through clenched teeth. The arm held itself as still as possible as I moved, drawing my handgun and hefting that as Reign grunted in response.

“Well, we’re getting hit a lot here. Gotta admit, didn’t expect this many assholes!” she snapped, and I nodded unthinkingly.

“Me neither.” I pulled up the breakdown of the floor and noted that the door in the back of the security office, that apparently led into the management offices, wasn’t on the map. “That way,” I ordered, nodding to the door, and Luna led the way.

The security office was a good one. The approaches leading up to it had the turrets in place and additional armoring, besides. But the walls?

Nobody ever thought about the walls.

As an APS operator, I was used to that. We ran through them a lot, plowing down buildings that annoyed us, out in the field, on a regular basis. Now, as we moved into the plush management suite, I whistled.

The interior here was nice—like, seriously so. Three apartments rolled into one, with a massive bed, a tall armory with security features that screamed it’d be a bitch to get past, and of course, a shower that looked like it’d been designed to shoot pornos in.

Hell, it probably had.

That wasn’t important, though. What was? The door on the far side that led into the lab. Luna took it at a run, bursting through and swearing as shots sparked off her armor, a low-caliber handgun apparently all the three workers in there had been left with.

A second later, though, she was rolling back through the door. A massive figure pinned her down as metal teeth flashed for her throat.

She braced her arm under their throat, then heaved, barely keeping the creature back. She yanked her submachine gun out again, pressing it to their stomach and firing on full auto.

The noise was horrific. The bullets impacted some kind of interwoven body armor, as the ceiling of the bedroom opened, and three more of the twisted semi-humanoid creatures were dumped in.

I barely had time to register it, the slight whirr of the ceiling opening all the warning that I got before the nearest one hit me, sending me rolling and onto my back. Screams rose as my upper chest and shoulder—still being repaired by the nanites—was broken again.

I lifted my left arm in time. Fortunately, it was faster than my natural one was, and unhindered by pain. I grabbed onto the snout of the creature, twisting sideways as I brought my handgun up, ramming it into the underside of one ear, then pulling the trigger.

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Whatever armoring the fuckers had implanted, there wasn’t any there at least, and the high-caliber handgun round shredded its brain, before impacting the wall on the far side.

I tossed the body off me with another scream of pain, before twisting and lining up on the one that had Gessh’s leg in its mouth.

I hesitated, aiming as she moved, and in that time, her blade was out and its head was severed, blood fountaining free. Reign had hit hers with a round from the sniper rifle. And regardless of the armoring, a high-powered sniper rifle at a range of a few meters wasn’t being stopped by anything like that.

Luna was the only one still fighting. Her arm was a mess now, as the fucker chewed on it, until she twisted, driving her fist down its throat.

It bucked, writhing, teeth sunk into her heavily bleeding forearm as she shook it around. But once her fist was closed in there? It was only a matter of time.

The creature’s struggles grew weaker and more panicked as she twisted, then forced herself to her feet, her chest heaving. The massive musculature of the orc side of her genes made itself known, as did the insane levels of ferocity, as she marched through the door and back into the lab.

I could see her through the open door, as she stared at someone, the choking creature still dangling from her arm. Then she grabbed onto the top of the snout and pulled.

The cracks of bones as she slowly and deliberately tore the upper half of its skull free were savage, and the hiss of pain was lost under the roar of triumph as she killed the creature.

I slumped back, glancing around. The others looked just as fucked as I felt. The security system finally pinged, opening itself up to me.

I grinned, sagging as my head banged off the floor—actual carpet and everything—and I got to work. All the turrets were loaded with mine and the team’s images; the security system went from friend to foe with the idents programmed in so far, every one of those marked as “safe” now being marked as a target.

I loaded in a pause authorization and watched as my target walked out of the lift. Two dozen gangers, all in decent armor and armed to the teeth, accompanied him. In the middle was the chemist Lucky had wanted me to get, along with a pair of large boxes that hovered along on drone repulsors, presumably filled with his equipment.

I removed the block on the chief asshole’s comm, and a second later, it chimed as he registered the change, and called me.

“So,” he said coldly, even as I watched him through a camera. “If you’ve made a mess in my quarters, I’ll make your death painful.”

“Meh, define ‘mess,’” I replied. “Seriously, what the fuck were those things?”

“My pets?” he said, a sneer clear on his face. “Goblin and orc hybrids, wet-wired for enhanced aggression and kitted with subdermal armor, as well as replacement jaws. How many did they kill?”

“Kill?” I asked with a snort. “None. They fucking slobbered all over us, though.”

I deliberately didn’t mention the injuries, and when I sensed the access request to the cameras in here, I permitted it, watching his face as he saw his trashed room.

“You’ll pay for that,” he swore, as Luna strode in, dragging the chemists, shoving them into the corner, and I added them to the “safe” list for the security system.

“Well, that’s the point,” I said slowly. “Will I pay, or will I be paid?”

“You’ll fucking pay!” he snarled, turning in to the corridor that led toward the one his apartment was on, and moving closer and closer to the security office.

I grinned, my helmet and my mental avatar both hiding that as I spoke. “So, here’s the deal. You transfer me all your creds, and we don’t kill them.”

“You kill them, and I’ve a new chemist right here—”

“True, but you could have four chemists, rather than just the one. Surely that’d be better, right? I mean, you did just fight to get him.”

“And let’s say I play along,” he said. “What’s to stop you from killing them once you have my creds?”

“Enlightened self-interest.” I took Gessh’s hand and clambered to my feet. “I mean, I’d much rather we all got along,” I lied. The passages to the apartment flickered up one by one as I changed the camera’s views, showing me dozens of thugs standing there, armed to the teeth. Most had no armor, but those who did? They were loaded for bear.

“Tell you what,” he replied. “You shoot your team, right now, and then you surrender. I’ll make it quick.”

“Or, I could not.” I snorted.

“Fine.” He accessed the speakers, and I approved it, keeping the illusion intact as he started to speak. “To all of you. One of you gets to walk out of here, and it’s not that fuck that led you in. Whoever shoots the others first? You go free. You’ve got till the count of five.”

“I’ll make it easy on you,” I said loudly, to him, but still playing the game. “I’ll kill all your guards on three, and if I don’t get a fuckload of credits when I hit five? I’ll let you join them.”

“I’m holding all the cards here, asshole. One.” He sneered, stepping into the corridor that held the security station front entrance, as well as the entrance to his room.

“Two,” I replied, smiling, and connecting to the speaker system all around him. “When we hit three, you all die. Anyone who drops their weapons before they get shot? There’s a chance for you.”

“Three,” he said.

“Your choice,” I agreed. “Fire.”

The heavy turrets and the wall-mounted ones that had been such a nightmare for me jerked into life, their targets already locked in. They opened fire, as I zoomed in on my target’s face.

“Checkmate, motherfucker,” I purred.

That the same trick had worked twice was awesome, and I made a mental note to buy some more of those fuckers from Bowdoin when I got the chance.

Sure, yeah, they were limited use. They worked only if you could get past all the security, past the firewalls, and literally had to be plugged directly into the security server. But the effect?

Especially on assholes who thought they were safe?

It was just plain wonderful.

The heavy turrets spat out rounds that tore through the armored bodies in the lead, deliberately excluding the boss and the chemist, but taking down the rest of his closest security team. As the wall-mounted smaller turrets spun to life, the guards who were used to being protected by the hardware were the first to fall.

Then we opened fire, doors opening and fire filling the corridors.

When I say “we,” obviously I meant the others, as I sat on a rather nice chair, making a mental note to take the fucker with me, as I sent a mental knock with my Keystone to Sirisena, grinning as I spoke into the sudden silence. The air filled with the echo of heavy fire, the slowly rising screams and groans as the realizations kicked in.

“Four…” I said slowly, drawing the word out, as those few who were both still armed, and still capable of using those weapons, dumped them fast. “F—” I started, only to receive a response, and a credit transfer.

I stared at it, long seconds passing, as I considered my next move.

“Luna, grab that fucker and the chemist.” I nodded to the door, knowing that although her arm was a mess, I’d seen her use a medikit, and right now, she was still on the ragged edge, making her even more terrifying.

“Reign,” I said softly, “get bags ready. Gessh, get out there and loot the team around that dickbag. Make it fast. You’ve got two minutes.”

They moved. Whether it was the strain in my voice or the ingrained response to orders, or even that they trusted me, I didn’t know. But what I did know?

We’d just won.