That was a memory I’d keep with me ’til the day I died.
The look of utter disbelief as their own turrets opened fire, every single one locked on a head; the armor-piercing, heavy rounds that they’d loaded the turrets with to protect them instead turned their brains to literal mince.
I sagged, allowing myself to sit on the edge of the nearby table and mentally reached out to the air lock, now available to me as the master of the security system. I triggered the emergency door and grinned as Gessh and Luna crawled up and out a few seconds later, guns at the ready, only to find me sitting, exhausted, surrounded by the dead.
“How’s Reign?” Luna asked straightaway.
“I’m fine, thanks. How’re you?” I muttered under my breath.
“I’m fine!” Reign called down from the stairwell, limping down it and looking around at us. The walls and ceiling literally dripped with blood as we looked at one another, unable to believe that not only had that crazy, shitty plan worked, but that we were still alive.
I queried the security system. The cameras outside showed two cashiers currently looting the unconscious figure of their boss in the alley behind the building. But besides that? No apparent interest from the outside world.
“We need to move fast,” I said, categorically unable to accept that it’d worked as well as it had. “Something has to have gone wrong, so let’s loot the fucking place, and get out.”
“I’ll take this floor…but not in here,” Gessh said, and I snorted, looking over at the bodies.
“Yeah, fair point,” I acknowledged. “I’ll take in here.”
“I’ve got the next floor,” Luna said, tearing out after Reign, who’d called out that she’d get the armory.
I shook my head, not knowing nor caring who got where, just hoping that they’d not rip me off too badly, considering how new our little alliance was.
Instead, I set to with a will. My vibro-blade made quick work of the flesh that any decent mod was attached to, even as I set their guns, credit-chips, and more aside.
In ten minutes, I was done. My bag and a spare I’d looted from one of the bodies—collapsible, which was nice—were full of expensive replacement body parts. I’d dumped my shitty rifle, replacing it with a Centronics Five: solid, dependable, and with the capacity to fire mission-dependent rounds.
Anything from incendiary to high explosive, trackers, armor-piercing and smart rounds joined the standard old-fashioned slugs, and I loved it. It just “fit” me, looking pretty fucking evil and sleek.
The shotgun I kept. My old handgun was back on my hip, and I nodded to myself in satisfaction over that, mentally making a memo to recharge the damn grip later.
Beyond that? I had a couple of new toys: grenades, sticky-bombs, and that old favorite, the MADD grenade.
Monomolecular Area Denial Device – [MADD]
Tier: Three
The Monomolecular Area Denial Device, also referred to by its more familiar name of the MADD grenade, is both beloved of the deployer, and an unrivaled nightmare for those at the “business end.”
Upon deployment, the MADD grenade fires two hundred and thirty monomolecular wires in all directions. The maximum range of said wires is 20m, and each wire ends with a single expandable anchor. While powered (Mk1 MADD holds a maximum charge of 230A), the molecular wires give off a faintly discernable shimmer.
This is the only warning your enemies will receive.
Any contact with the wires by any form of flesh or any armor under a tier three minimum, is expected to be fatal. The MADD grenade has been banned in seven of the twelve states, and earned confirmed kill-counts of over one hundred and seventeen armored and enraged orcs in the Pelosian Conflict per grenade.
Five more states have embraced the MADD and as such, supplies are highly limited, so purchase additional supplies as soon as possible using this link: [Redacted] and quote code [slaughter117] to receive a one-off discount of 0.3% against cases of 12 or more.
Durability: 100/100
Credit Cost: 150
I held it uncertainly in my right hand, staring at it and trying to decide whether I wanted this fucking insane thing anywhere near me, or whether I should try to get more.
They’d been banned in more than the seven states that the company crap claimed. At last count, it was banned by anyone who had any fucking sense, after a faulty sensor batch resulted in over three hundred of these little darlings detonating after so much as a loud noise was made near them.
The monomolecular wires deployed via an explosive charge, firing in all directions and punching into the walls, floors, and people that were nearby on each occasion, killing thousands of people.
It wasn’t the explosion that was the issue, although I’d imagine having one in your trouser pocket didn’t feel that way.
It was that the wires were almost invisible, able to cut through tier one through three body armor and literal steel. And, as if those details weren’t insane enough, for so long as the charge lasted, it was also electrified.
So much as touching a wire resulted in you shaking uncontrollably, which basically ensured you ended up shredded into tiny ribbons.
The original designer of the MADD grenade was brutally murdered by the relatives of the orcs he hired for “testing,” and he’d damn well deserved it.
Not even goblins deserved that shit.
I’d pocketed it—gingerly, to be sure—but the way my life was? It was a hell of a weapon of last resort, and I’d damn well keep it for that just in case.
Besides, if it went off accidentally? I’d never know.
After twenty goddamn minutes, I rounded the others up. Reign was easy to find, wailing on a recessed safe, and screaming abuse.
She’d apparently tried to open it quietly, then loudly. Then she’d gathered some high explosives from the armory, and was making goddamn sure that it was pressed into each and every corner, nook, and cranny it could be.
I paused, staring at the utter mess of plastique, the wildly grinning Reign, and was about to point out that the way she’d done it? It wasn’t going to work the way she wanted…when she winked at me and set it off.
Luna dragged me out from under the table a few minutes later, dusting me off and nodding, apparently pleased that I was intact—more or less—while I tried to speak through shock and apoplectic rage.
It was made worse by the minor detail that not only had Reign’s jury-rigged explosives utterly failed to free the door, they had set off the booby trap that was waiting for anyone who tried to pick the lock.
That was what had picked me up and thrown me across the room. The backs of my legs had hit the front of a desk and flipped me over it, before it rolled atop me.
Whatever was stored in the “safe” was beyond looting now. Fuck, it was practically atomized. And where the firefights, the hacking, and frankly, the full-scale assault on the guild headquarters had gone unnoticed by the outside world pretty much?
The attempt at opening that fucking safe didn’t.
Reign was being dusted down and having a medikit applied to the nape of her neck, as well as being handed towels to wipe the blood from her ears, nose, and mouth.
I was reminded of dealing with the idiots who had first graduated from basic training in the army, or worse, those goddamn first-week-out-of-training second lieutenants.
The utter idiots who didn’t realize that, as they were right now? After completing the “training” modules that were literally designed by other officers? They had the real-world survivability and common sense of a baby duck, and one at that, that had already plucked itself, rolled in the marinade, and was contemplating the nice warm oven as somewhere for a lovely nap.
I glared at her, torn between the absolute desire to just up and shoot her, the need to keep her—because like it or not, I needed, and even liked her—and worst of all?
Knowing that she had potential, and I was now stuck with breaking her in.
At least now I knew one thing for sure that I’d meant to ask.
She was most likely a career merc, not ex-army.
Only one ex-army member in the known universe was suicidal enough to play with explosives like that, and thank the gods Michael Head wasn’t here right now.
That fucker, I’d have had to shoot out of self-preservation, if he hadn’t already proved himself to be nigh-on unkillable.
I shook myself, realizing that I was drifting and probably had my second concussion of the week, or a good dazing at least, and I forced myself to my feet.
“Okay…everyone okay?” I asked, getting nods from Luna and Gessh, and a confused look from Reign. “Fuck it, good enough.”
“We got the upstairs sorted out, more or less,” Luna told me, with Gessh nodding to a pair of bags by the door.
“We got some more mods and gear that was in a private safe upstairs, as well as tearing the back of the locker system. Idiots armored the front, then left it against a standard stone wall. Crowbar in, and boom, the lockers were free to loot.” Gessh nodded in satisfaction. “You’d be amazed how many items of lacy underwear we found.”
“And who was apparently wearing them,” Luna added. “We’re not judging, though. I mean, if the least likely guy in the room wants to wear lacy G-strings, more power to them.”
“I don’t want to know.” I held up a hand as my mind filled with the images from a particular party we’d attended once.
Fergie’s giant, red-bearded goliath of a frame squeezed into a latex dress was enough to have me needing therapy. Add in G-strings, and I’d rather shoot myself now than go on.
“You got everything then?” I asked, and Gessh nodded.
“Literally anything I could find. Left the shitty guns, took the good stuff. Got some specialist ammo as well. Couldn’t carry everything, so just grabbed the best I could. Then I heard the explosion, so…” She shrugged, and I winced as a direct feed demand came through.
I pulled up the request, seeing it was from ACE, and I dismissed it, turning to the others. “Luna, anything we can salvage?” I nodded to the remains of the safe.
“Fuck all,” she said disgustedly. “Must have been some serious explosives in there.” She held up a handful of shattered and burned electronics and tossed them on the floor. “Judging from the sheer fucking number of these? At least fifty cred-chips as well as whatever else was in there.”
“Fuck’s sake, Reign!” I growled, looking at the dazed half-elf, before shaking my head. “Fuck it. Time to run. Grab what you got and let’s get out of here.”
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“I’ll bring Reign.” Luna grunted, ducking under an outstretched arm and tossing the blonde woman over one shoulder with ease, as the rest of us started gathering her—and our—gear and loot.
A minute later, the demands for digital camera feed access became more strident by the second. ACE was attempting to insinuate a worm into the security system, and of course, some of the guild who had been out on jobs were banging on the front door, or contemplating the windows higher in the structure for access points.
We raced for the main room. The still-open air lock leading to the level below was obvious enough that if anyone did a real search, they’d find it. So instead of trying to hide it, I dragged the bodies over and pitched them through it unceremoniously.
They fell, crashing and splatting into the ground far below, before we started down the ropes that Gessh and Luna had put into place. The growls from whatever beast lived down here normally echoed around in warning as we appeared.
We ignored it, and I ordered the air lock to seal, then stopped it halfway, before setting the turrets to fire on anyone who arrived as an enemy. I triggered the “wipe” that Bowdoin had given me, removing all trace of us from the system, and we started to run.
The plan wasn’t to conceal that we’d been there—there was no way that’d work. The building was on fire in places, the entire upper management had been slaughtered, the vault destroyed and the armory raided.
Most telling of all, the various assholes had not only had their weapons nicked, but they’d been stripped for parts.
In dumping their bodies through the air lock into the undercity, though, it exposed that they’d been disposing bodies that way for simply forever. Add in that the undercity was full of specters? Well. The mods being stripped gave a nice, simple explanation for the ACE, should they want it.
Asshole mercs disposed of people into the undercity; one day they opened the hole, and something came up instead of going down. They got slaughtered, specters killed everyone and set off the explosives; they took the weapons and mods, and fucked off.
It was a shitty explanation. It really was. My intention had been that I’d hide the air lock as much as possible, and hide the bodies down here still, then open the back door, and leave them to make their own decisions.
ACE would have turned up, found the staff wandering around trying to make sense of things, and they’d have promptly arrested them all on the grounds that the best police work involved the least effort on their part.
As it was, that would result in the staff being slaughtered by their own automated turrets, so I left the doors locked, leaving that surprise for the ACE assholes, as they’d no doubt break in as soon as they could, intending to loot the place while “securing the evidence.”
One good turn deserves another, after all, and ACE members deserved summary judgment in a way few others did, in my experience.
Now they’d have to fight their way past the turrets and so on, then find that “something” came up from beneath, then probably fucked off that way again.
They’d have to decide whether they wanted to go searching in the depths themselves or whether they wanted to close the case.
I bet on the latter.
Either way, though, we hurried along the narrow passages, clambering up and down where we needed to, and essentially followed the same path I’d followed days earlier, and that Luna and Gessh had traveled to get here, using my RI to produce a map.
“I still say you got it easy,” I grunted to Luna as I helped her up onto a platform a few minutes later.
She laughed, clapping me on the shoulder.
“We did, more or less. A handful of specters were wandering about and we hit them, then dumped them underneath the opening, scaring off the cave dragon and…”
“The what?”
“Cave dragon,” she repeated. “Ah, crap, I’ve got no idea what they’re really called, but we always called them cave dragons. They’re big damn lizards with pointy teeth that live in a cave. What else would I call it?”
“Point.” I shrugged, not really interested enough to give a fuck beyond that it wasn’t chasing us. We’d moved around it, then fucked off as it jealously guarded its pile of bodies, making sure there was even less evidence to tie us to this, as it feasted.
The trip to the surface took over an hour, made insanely easier by the combination—once Reign was on her feet—of none of us being injured seriously, all being able to see, and all being healthy and heavily armed.
The few specters, creatures, and random vagrants we bumped into either ran for it, attacked and were mowed down, or backed away slowly.
By the time we got out of the undercity, we were all a lot happier, and a short while later, we were in the lift at my apartment block.
“Why here, though?” Luna squinted out over the city as the lift rose. “I mean, why’d the army put you up here?”
“That captain I need to go see later?” I tried to keep the bitterness out of my voice.
“Yeah?”
“Well, he fucked me over, massively. He’s why my friends died, and I got so badly fucked up. Then he pulled a fast one and charged me for the loss of the suit, the helo, everything, right the fuck up to the maximum.”
“What do you mean, charged you?”
“Corpos brought it in three years back,” I explained. “You do something that fucks the mission up, like massively so? They can charge you a percentage of the cost of the losses. It’s never really used, as all you do is counter the claim with your records, and if you weren’t in the wrong? The cost of the claim is added to the accusing officer.”
“So why’d he do it?”
“He knew that I had classified shit on my recording, and that I’d wiped all other sources of evidence—on orders—and that the only version of it was being given to his boss, so I couldn’t appeal it, not without sharing classified recordings.”
“And if you did that?”
“Then all earnings, etc., while in service would be deducted from my balance, and I’d have been sold as an indentured soldier to the regular army, used on the front lines, serving a life sentence.”
I growled that last bit out, having only realized this afternoon just how neatly I’d been stitched up, and having gone even deeper into my hatred for Tyrannus than before.
That fucker’s last hours were going to be painful.
“He did all of that because he gained twenty percent of the creds recovered from me, and then he basically sold my fucking suit out from under me. That I had a month’s rent agreed to be paid somewhere by some corpo scumbag? He picked the shittiest and cheapest place possible. Believe me, that shitbird is going to pay for this.”
“Glad to hear it,” she replied, nodding. “I’d hate to think you let that kind of thing slide.”
“Oh, don’t worry,” I said with a cold smile. “By tomorrow, you’re going to know exactly who and what I am, as well as what I’m capable of.”
“Yeah, or we’re all gonna be dead,” Reign offered, getting a snort from Gessh.
“Sister, you nearly killed us all with your stupidity back there, not to mention fucking us over for the creds…”
“Hey, how the hell was I supposed to know that they had the safe booby-trapped?” Reign growled, and I shook my head as the pair of them launched into an argument over “common sense” and “limited time” and more.
I stared out the window, watching the pounding rain, the dark skies and wondering whether we could really, genuinely do everything we needed to in a day.
We had until tonight to get the armor rerouted, the major had said. Literally tonight. Was that midnight? Was that by sunrise? Fuck, I didn’t know. I just— Wait, he’d said fourteen hours, right? Fuck it.
I needed to do it. I needed to get the thirty thousand, and the only way I was going to do that was by doing the jobs for Lucky, sell the mods, and the spare guns, and claim the bounties.
Most likely, the only way we’d get the thirty thousand that Bowdoin was demanding was by killing Stinger. That was worth two-fifty, after all.
The only way we’d take down a professional assassin? Superior firepower and equipment, not to mention surprise.
The only way to get those? We needed to hit the merc guild for decent gear, then we needed Lucky to share the target location with us. He would only do that when his other jobs were done, so we were down to running around like our asses were on fire as we tried to fit everything in.
The lift made its strangled attempt at a ding as we reached our destination. The ancient speakers, long since defaced, let loose that classic fart note that hung in the air longer than anything not related to a dodgy meal possibly could.
“Oh, this is such a classy place.” Luna groaned, disgusted, as the doors opened, the music of yet another party washing over us all.
“Urgh!” some dumb socialite complained as the smell rolled off the four of us—we had been traveling through abandoned sewers and worse, not to mention some of us being covered in blood and burnt by explosions—and I snorted my disgust in turn at the creature before me.
They’d gone in heavily for the body mods: feline ears atop their head, three tits—because hey, like any guy needs three hands—and judging from the literally sprayed-on glitter and lack of any clothing, they’d given themselves a full hermaphrodite workover.
I didn’t care what sexuality they were: male, female, they, them, toaster oven—people could literally be whatever gender or identity they wanted these days. It made no difference to me. What I didn’t like?
That they were standing in high heels that must be twenty centimeters high, naked apart from glitter, and they were swinging a goddamn horse-cock around directly in front of me.
“More fucking orcs! That’s it. We’re leaving this party,” the dumbass snapped, bouncing before us and deliberately drawing the eye.
Gessh took it worse than I did, though. Apparently that the disgust was in part due to her and her sister being half-orcs, she made her feelings known.
That she made it known by punting the fucker between the legs as hard as possible? Well. They were lifted a good half meter off the ground. And when they landed?
The only sound they made was clearly filled with pain.
“Let’s go see Lucky!” I smiled, deliberately ignoring Luna squatting down to have a “little conversation” with the downed partygoer, one foot on the tip of their cock.
People got the fuck out of our way quickly.
Possibly due to the furious look on Gessh’s face. Or possibly because we were armed to the fucking teeth, and she’d just punted someone into the middle of next week.
Either way, when we met Lucky on the far side, sprawled on a new, larger, and clearly more expensive couch, he nodded in greeting, paying markedly more attention to Reign, Luna, and Gessh than I was used to getting from him.
“So…you ladies here to join the party?” he asked, and Gessh snorted.
“We’re half-orcs, we’re not welcome,” she said, getting a frown from Lucky, who finally turned to me, one eyebrow raised in question, his own lantern jaw and parentage clear.
“One of your guests made their revulsion clear at our species,” Luna said flatly, rejoining us.
“They still alive?” Lucky’s brow lowered as he peered around us.
“For now.” Gessh shrugged. “They’ll not be fucking for a while, though.”
“Fucking?”
“They had a horse-cock and—”
“Calos,” Lucky growled. “Fucking Calos!” He gestured and two of the gangers were moving already, before he turned back to the group. “My apologies, ladies…and Kabutt. Here, beers are on me…” He gestured to a couch to one side; a few others already sitting there got up hurriedly and moved, and I snorted, recognizing it as his old one.
“We’re not here for the party.” I pulled one of the bags out, then dumped it on the floor before him, getting a glare from Lucky as I did. “That’s the debt square.”
He snorted. “I say when the debt’s done, Kabutt,” he growled, going from inviting to aggressive in a heartbeat. “You still owe me for—”
“One more hit and two chemists,” I agreed, nodding to him. “Send me the details now, and anything you have on the final hit.”
“You’ll get that when you’re done with—”
I cut him off, as one of his partners, the woman who had checked the drugs, slid the bag aside, looking in.
“Send me everything, Lucky. You’ve got six hours. Then I’m leaving the city. You want the job done before I go? Send it to me.”
“The fuck you are. You owe me—” he snarled.
I nodded to the bag.
“I owe you a hundred grand in mods. There’s twice that there. Consider the rest a deposit for when I return. I’ll be gone about three weeks…” I was making it all up on the spot, but I’d just realized that if I didn’t give him a reason to, when I tried to get the info off him later? He could be drugged up to the eyeballs and unable to share it.
“But when I come back? That’s when this little deal gets renegotiated.”
“Uh-huh.” He sneered, glancing to the side and doing a double take as his partner pulled one of the four arms that I’d put in his bag out.
It was a standard Nemesis #5, nicer than the one I had in place, but of fucking course, it was a right arm again, and I didn’t feel like losing my own for shits and giggles just to chip that.
The girls had agreed that any mods we ripped were to go toward paying off my debts, and all the weapons, armor, and ammo were to be sorted out between us fairly.
I had no doubt that they’d each pocketed a little something, at the least. I’d said nothing about the replacement of their personal guns with much better ones, and that when we quickly sorted shit out in the car, none of those guns were put in the loot “to be shared” pile.
That was fine, though; we still had plenty, and I’d done the same.
The Nemesis #5 was, obviously, several versions higher than the basic model I had on my arm, incorporating some seriously shit-hot autotargeting and integration options that I just didn’t have.
It was also a tier-three mod, as were the forearm replacement and the eyepiece.
Just those three when I’d checked them out, I was confident would be over a hundred grand in any chop shop. Add in the full set of synth organs, the lower legs—short-range jump-jets included—and the integrated deck in the left forearm?
Two hundred was achievable, if at a push.
That wasn’t my problem, though. I was heavily armed, and clearly about to kill people if this went badly, and so were my friends.
That gave Lucky enough of a reason to pause. And when he checked the gear? It was clear that it was more than he’d invested in me by a good ways.
I’d kept a few mods back, and they were going to go to Lion, if I could get things sorted later. But for now? Lucky was left with two choices.
He could get pissy, and we possibly start the fight a little early. Or he could play nice, get me to do the jobs he wanted doing, and then kill us, as I was betting he’d always intended on doing.
As soon as he smiled widely, spreading his hands in a “well, what can I do” gesture, I knew I was on the money.
“Fine. We’re partners here, after all, Kabutt. No reason to be like that! Here…”
He sent me a datafile, and my RI checked it for viruses and so on, before running it.
Three locations popped up, one on the floor a few above the one we were on, deep in the market level again. The other two were higher, just over a dozen floors higher, and all three came with images, letting me be very sure of the target.
Job: Update!
Kabutt will carry out five [5] contract hits for Lucky, including and limited to the following:
· 2 x Standard Assassinations:
· [Lilith, Floor 72 – Terminated]
· [Sirisena, Floor 85 – Location attached]
· 2 x Chemist lab raids
· [Lilith’s Lab – Location attached]
· [Sirisena’s Lab – Location attached]
· 1 x Assassination of [Stinger]
Supplemental:
1 x Recover 100,000 credits worth of Specter Mods
In exchange Kabutt has received:
· 47,500 x direct credit transfer
· 30,000 x store credit for Lion’s Chop Shop
· ? x Additional bounties
· 4 x gang members will be dispatched to Kabutt’s choice of location to act as a distraction
Job Accepted
“It’s the lab you want—the physical location, or the chemist?” I asked, and he snorted, shaking his head and looking at me like I was an idiot.
“The chemist, obviously,” he said flatly.
The data before me updated as he said it to reflect that.
“You fucking said the lab.” I shrugged, uncaring, before storing them and setting waypoints, before speaking.
“And the last one?”
“You do those first, and then I’ll send it to you,” he promised. “But six hours? You’ll never get it all done in that time. And Kabutt? I may be pretty as an angel, but I ain’t one. You try skipping out without doing those jobs…”
“I’ll hit your fucking jobs, don’t worry.” I turned and led the others through the darkness of the floor toward my apartment.