Bowdoin, it turned out, was as good as his word. He’d not only found the location, but he’d verified the target was there—currently with a couple of high-priced whores, although their booking was only valid for another two hours—and he’d even cased the security system, more or less.

He’d tell me nothing else, not yet, and I transferred the first fifteen thousand credits to him, enjoying the slight break in his composure as the creds registered with him as being delivered.

I’d also pointed out that if he ran, and didn’t do the job I’d hired him for, I’d hunt him down and murder him in a variety of different, painful, and interesting ways.

I didn’t know whether he was honorable, whether it was the allure of another twelve thousand creds, or the threats and knowing that although Richie wasn’t about right now, I’d told him he would be soon—but whatever the reason, he assured me he was good for it, and he’d be in touch in about three hours, as it’d take him that long to reach the target site.

He’d also given me the rough area, so I could be there. But without access codes for the corpo zone, I wasn’t getting in there easily, even to look around.

“Well, look what the cat dragged in,” Lion said a few minutes later, when I’d finished the call and we were unloading the cab, directing the container into his shop. “So…to what do I owe the pleasure?” He shook his head at the state of the four of us. “No docs or carvers wherever you were?” He got Gessh and Luna scanned, while Reign looked at a catalog of upgrades.

“Plenty.” I pulled the top off the container and let him look inside, seeing the dozen or so tier-three mods laid atop the piles of guns. “We needed to see someone we could trust, though, and I think I need some internal work done.”

“Internal?” he asked slowly, and I nodded, fixing him with a glare.

“Yeah, one of the shots hit something, and I keep feeling a reverberation, almost like a signal, but it cuts off. Something’s clearly broken.”

“Yeah…” He watched my eyes. After a couple of seconds, he glanced to the side at some papers, and I moved to them, picking up a pencil and awkwardly forming the letters while he snorted, and pretended to show me something on the datadeck next to it.

I know what you put in me. Get it the fuck out.

The glare he gave me was priceless, but he still drew an eye on the paper and tapped it.

“It’s in my eyes?” I asked, getting a long-suffering stare from him before he gestured behind him.

“Cameras?” I whispered, and he nodded, tapping the paper again, and taking a pencil from me and speaking aloud.

“Okay, the injury could be here…the organelles might do what you’re saying if…” He went on talking utter bollocks as he scrawled a note.

Asshole in the room behind, watching on camera. Works for the gang.

“Lucky?” I whispered, and he shook his head.

“Luckier than you’ve a right to be, if that’s the extent of the damage done to you,” he said loudly, before muttering, “Works for him, yeah.”

“Chest as well, right here,” I pointed out, getting a sigh as he got scanners and more and checked me over. It took a few minutes for him to scan all of me, and by the end of it, I was handed a very simple note again.

Not my choice to add it in. I can take it out, but need an excuse for Lucky.

“All of it,” I said aloud. “Replace it all—the damaged organelles and the clavicle and the rest. Fix me up, carver. Make me better than before.”

“I can, but you might be better off upgrading the internals. Let’s see what you’ve brought me, and we can talk a price…They’re not specter parts, right?”

“No, all genuine living donors,” I grunted, as he shot me a look.

“Willing donors?” he asked. “Am I going to have pissed-off people knocking on my door searching for their loved ones?”

“Do you normally?” I countered.

“Normally I’m buying from the Orc. Nobody comes knocking for those he’s pissed at.”

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

“Believe me, nobody’s left alive who fucked with us,” I said. “Those who started this one? This is all that’s left of them.”

“Well…” He paused, looking it over, then shook his head. “I can’t.”

“What?”

“I can’t take them.”

“The fuck you can’t,” I snapped. “They’re right there and you’ve got—”

“I can’t buy them,” he hissed, glaring at me. “First, I can’t fucking afford it. You think I’d agree to deals like that with Lucky if I had a choice? I don’t. Second, I can’t buy these from you, not without Oshbob’s okay.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” I snarled. “He’s a fucking orc, that’s all!”

“There a problem?” Luna called over, and I shook my head, realizing how that might have sounded to a half-orc.

“No, don’t worry!” I called back, before turning to Lion. “Listen, dickhead, you’re acting like he’s some corpo head and you’re sucking his balls for a raise! He’s a fucking gang lord, that’s all!”

“He’s the Orc, not an orc.” Lion scratched the back of his head and gestured at the guns and mods. “Look, all of this? He’ll be selling this kinda shit. I buy from a competitor of his? I might be getting a few pointed questions, or I might be getting my head handed to me, my family liquidated, literally.”

“I’m not a fucking competitor, all right? I sold him some through Lucky. Now I need to move some more. We need repairs and the girls need upgrades. I need fixing up and…” I paused, then nodded as a thought occurred to me. “It’s not Lucky that’s the issue here, right? It’s this Oshbob?”

“Damn right. Lucky is a punk. Sure, he thinks he’s a gang boss, but he’s nothing, just another floor boss in some arcology. Although, he’s got some muscle behind him. He turns up missing? Nobody’s going to give a fuck. You fuck with the Orc? That’s different.”

“Fine. Look, we need fixed up and now. You say you can’t buy these, okay. How about a loan?”

“I’m broke, you asshole. I’m not taking some goddamn deal that puts me in your pocket as well as Lucky’s…” Lion growled.

“No, you dick,” I snapped, glaring at him. “What I’m saying is you take these, you clean them up, put them on the walls, do whatever you do with them, and we take half. No cost upfront.”

“I’m listening,” he said, after pausing.

“I’ve got a meeting with Oshbob tomorrow. Might be that we make a deal, might be that we fucking shoot each other—no idea yet. But, as part of a deal—if we make one—I’ll make sure I can sell parts to you, or trade or whatever. Sound good?”

“And the rest of this?” He gestured to the guns and weapon mods. “I can’t take that, man. I don’t deal in that shit, and before you ask, no, you can’t leave them here. Word gets out, I’ll be hit inside the hour.”

“Fuck…Fine!” I snarled. “Look, fix up the girls, whatever they want, and take it off the trade value of these…” I gestured to the pile. “Then fix my guts—and give me it to take with me—and my chest, that’ll do for now.”

“And you’ll trust me with these mods?” He frowned. “No offense, Kabutt, you’ve met me once. You’re either a trusting fool or…”

“I’m a good judge of character,” I said, with a wide smile. “Also, if you fuck with me? I’ll come torture you to death. I should be getting my armor back in the next day or two, and I need the spinal mod. You’ll need to order one in, and the only way you can do that?”

“Is if I’m alive and I’ve got the creds,” he agreed, sighing. “Fine, get your ass in the chair and let’s get you sorted first. It’ll not take long.”

“How long?”

“An hour?” He shrugged. “The mods need time to settle, even with nanites.”

“Fuck, we need to be out of here in an hour. We need a cab and…” I bit my tongue, then nodded, heading inside. “Okay, people, got a plan.” I grinned.

~~~

“Deal, I guess,” Julius said an hour and a half later, standing in the chop shop over the box of guns, now severely depleted, as we bumped fists.

“Glad to hear it, mate. I’d hate to do this without you,” I admitted.

The older merc grinned, then shrugged.

“For this? It’s enough to get my little guild rolling nicely back on track, and a deal with a carver of our own? Definitely worth it.”

“Yeah, well, it’s only if he can get the Orc to sign off on it,” Lion growled, sounding more and more like his namesake as I loaded more and more onto our fragile relationship.

“I’d say that’s his problem, carver.” Julius shrugged. “Ours are the mods. If we bring our wounded to you, and only you, you give us a twenty percent discount, and we provide any mods we get, living only, obviously—”

Julius frowned at me. “It’s not like anyone would traffic in specter mods, but you’d be surprised how many people we end up in fights with, even with the aim of our guild. Those mods come to you, you hold a line of credit for us, and we call on it when we need it. Something for everyone.”

“Especially me.” I clapped Julius on the shoulder and took the small package from Lion. “I’ll see you later tonight, if not before.”

“Definitely before,” Julius grunted. “You know the old adage— no plan survives contact with the enemy.”

“Well, just keep that fucking line free, I guess.” I grinned, before turning and walking back to the aircab that was waiting patiently. “See you!” I called, climbing in, and for the first time in ages, not getting a warning that I’d fouled the cab on entry.

“We all ready?” I asked the others, with Luna, holding up her formerly chewed left arm—now a tier-three mod replacement from the elbow down—to demonstrate just how ready she was.

“You have no idea,” Luna said softly, her fingers extruding long bladed claws as she waved the hand, before retracting them and closing it again.

“Good to go,” Gessh agreed, shifting uncomfortably as she tried to get used to the new layout. Several of her organs had been replaced with organelles by Lion, as it was apparently cheaper than digging around inside her and “fucking with the balance of your guts.”

Her intestines had been nicked, and the bowel had been slowly leaking literal shit into her abdominal cavity, while the nanites had been struggling to make headway against what had turned out to be a necrotic poison loadout on the bullets.

That had pissed Lion off no end, as the combination of that, her high pain threshold, and her “not wanting to be a bother” had meant that by the time he found the actual real level of the damage, she needed a lot more work than he’d been expecting.

Reign was the best off out of all of us. All of her injuries were minor and easily solved with a dose of ’nites, so she spent her time ostensibly watching Lion to make sure he did the job right.

I was trusting him a lot, but not that fucking much.

I’d had a little additional work, nothing fully cybernetic that required integration, just an additional load-bearing bone augmentation across my upper left side, literally a replacement for the collarbone, and some armoring on the back to repair the shoulder blade.

It didn’t count against my cybernetic total, I was damn pleased to hear, and the end result was that I was ready, should I decide to go for a full subdermal armoring next.

Regardless of anything else, though, I was back in the game, as were the others. We were armed for bear, complete with a tiny, and very old-school drone, now loaded with my tracker, and the fucking bomb that Lion had removed at my demand.

It was time to take down Stinger. And then? We were ready to face whatever happened with Lucky.