Chapter Thirty-Five

The first step, while also boring, was for the team to damn well get ready for an extended harvesting trip.

We needed to get the suit sorted, we needed to get the bank filled with credits again, as despite the others all agreeing that from now on we’d pool our takings, until the suits were up and running, we’d only done a handful of minor jobs.

Most of all? We needed to get ready.

I was getting that itchy feeling between my shoulder blades that something was wrong, very wrong, and that was never good. Sitting there as the air-cab flew us across the city, I worried away at it, until I found the niggle that was eating at me.

It felt like we’d just been on the verge of earning real credits and something had hit to stop it. As much as I joked around and laughingly cursed the gods of blood and chrome, I didn’t really believe in them, and neither did I believe in the gods of the old world, or any world for that matter.

I believed there was such a thing as luck, but I also believed that it was what you made of it that counted.

We had the medikits ready, we were ready, we had the gear, and the suit, we had a home, and a plan.

All of that was from not taking any shit and from continually forging forwards. Now though? I felt like we were being held back. Held back to slow us down, like we’d been moving too fast, too successfully.

Well, looking at that, if there was someone out to get us, I didn’t believe it was Oshbob and his crew, despite their dodginess, and I didn’t believe we had a mole.

That left two avenues. First was Trees, he was a dickhead, and he deserved his face kicking in but the question of if he was smart enough to have set all of this up?

No. He’d take advantage of the situation, certainly, but I didn’t believe he could set it all up. That meant that there was another party involved, or this was a lucky coincidence and he was just taking the opportunity as it came.

That third party? That was the problem. If, as I was worrying, it was the major and his people? The only reason they’d not be hitting me and taking my suit right now, would be if they had limited resources themselves.

If they didn’t have access to the spares they needed, not easily, then they’d be leaving us to get the suit repaired. As soon as the suit was ready? That’s when they’d hit us, or near enough.

While the suit was stripped? They’d leave me to do that work. That was if they even knew about it and I wasn’t being paranoid.

Paranoia was a soldier’s friend though, right up until it wasn’t, and I resolved to make the most of it.

So. With the plan that the major knew what we were doing, and was fucking us over, maybe paying Trees to do it, then we needed to move, and fast, he’d either be waiting for us to fix the suit or…

Or he’d be busy, his team laying low, and he was planning to hit us soon.

If I was wrong, and all of this was a little low-grade paranoia? Worst case scenario, we ended up tired out from working our arses off.

If I was right? We’d make damn sure he got a nasty surprise when he came for us.

“Luna,” I said aloud, coming to a decision.

“Yeah boss?” she asked, turning from the window.

“Are you still getting those legs?” I nodded to Gessh’s ones, the black gloss hidden by her trousers currently.

“As soon as we’ve got the time, yeah?” She said, nodding.

“Get them now then.” I ordered. “We’re moving the schedule up, as of now people, we’re on full-on mode. If you need any work doing? Get it done NOW. Tomorrow we’re going dungeon diving.”

“Dungeon diving?” Reign asked, grinning. “You mean we’re going deep?”

“Oh yeah, and not just in your kinky fantasies.” I winked at her. “Seriously people, we use the rest of the day and tomorrow morning to prepare. We load up, get all the gear, all the mods and all the rest we can, because tomorrow we’re going deep into the Undercity, and we’re not coming back up until we’ve got enough high end mods and nanites to pay for the fucking suit entirely. We’re going all out.”

“Why now?” Reign sent me on singular mode through the tac-net, subvocalizing as Luna called Lion, and Gessh started shopping for replacement gear.

“I think we’re being slowed down deliberately, that dickhead Trees is either doing his best to get us out of the guild, or at least cost us a few days earnings and damage the guild. If I’m right and its deliberate? Then the major and his pets are coming for us, and soon.”

“So what do we do?”

“We get my suit ready, and we go get Richie and Sync, then we lay a trap.”

That was it, that was all I needed to say, and I was damn fortunate that they took me at that, everyone stepping up, as I made the plans.

We were suspended from the guild, but not booted out.

That meant we were still in, as far as the system cared.

I started plotting points of convergence on the map, searching for common outbreak points, and feeding them into my RI, searching for likely underground clusters.

By the time we’d landed I had four possible zones already worked out, and the almost certainly out of date Artem undercity maps, which all swore there was no way into those zones.

Reign and I splashed through the light afternoon rain shower and into the warehouse, while Gessh and Luna stayed in the air-cab, lifting off and heading straight for Lion’s chop-shop, along with a load of nanites, just in case.

Reign made herself useful organizing replacement parts, additional batteries, grenades, survival kits and more. Then she spent over forty thousand credits just on ammunition.

I had an altogether less fun conversation with Dondo, reminding him that my deal with Oshbob—who’d refused my call, Dondo had called me, making it obvious who my ‘contact’ was—was built on the understanding I’d be bringing in specter parts and a fuck load of nanites.

Well, tomorrow I’d be delivering them, and we needed the missing sections of the suit. He wasn’t happy. Apparently somewhere along the line, presumably when I’d started handing over great masses of credits, the deal had happily changed to me buying them, but that wasn’t going to continue.

Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

I also had a quick call with Julius, who basically told me off the record that I was up shit creek. Three volunteers had indeed stood up to be involved in the examination of the facts. One of them was Trees, and one was his closest ally.

That Liolet had stood up as well, was a slight bonus, we’d gotten on well, but… Borrolet was previously a member of his team, and that wasn’t good.

Basically Julius was on our side. He’d watched the clips I’d sent him, including the one from Gessh—fortunately her recording was still going—as she’d taken the corner, and been shot at close range, at no point threatening the little fucker until that gun was used.

The best I could hope for at this point, was that the investigation was a tie, as Liolet was undecided, and Trees and his mate were out to get me.

If there was a tie? Then the guild leader’s decision was final.

The good news however, when Julius asked why I’d been remotely checking out the jobs board and specter locations, was that as a registered member of the guild, if we went out and killed specters that weren’t on a job? Like we found them as we were hoping to, and slaughtered them?

We still got paid.

It wasn’t as much, the corporate payment that came from the hiring company was lost after all, but the original hundred credits from the city? That was still paid, providing we could prove the kill.

The recording was deemed enough evidence, provided it was fed through a verified guild AI. As long as the guild was getting their fifty credits per specter killed? Julius was onboard with the deal.

He refused to let us use the guild services before that though, so my hopes of buying up any discounted spare gear were smashed.

After the calls?

Well, Reign and I trained.

Dondo and co. hadn’t managed to get any more plasma swords, not yet, but I had two, the one I’d been using and the spare, as well as some training swords, and I made the most of the next two hours teaching Reign to use them.

After two hours?

It was clear that Reign was NOT getting a plasma sword when we got more.

She was frankly crap and would have managed to cut her own foot off twice if not for the fact we were using training imitation blades.

The rest of the afternoon was divided between maintenance, Reign working on our weapons and me on my suit, and finally, on me actually powering up my suit fully.

The system slowly began the power up cycle as I sat in the harness, a low level of utter sheer fucking terror that I was going to find the suit’s internals, the computer, the storage, all of it had been stripped out and replaced?

It was utterly misplaced as the first sight that greeted me, as the port in my back fired, sliding into my spinal slot and deploying, was the boot up screen that Richie had ‘fixed’ for me.

I’d made the mistake once of saying how boring the launch checklist was, and needless to say, that fucker had fixed it.

A giant lizard appeared before me, screamed and vomited out the data I needed, the overlay of the lizard suddenly battling some old word monkey making it almost impossible to read the questions that I knew were there, and I tabbed to them on instinct.

There were four systems available on boot. First and foremost was the ‘full’ boot. Basically was I ready to use my suit, and needed it to be working?

That was a no for today. I moved to the second in line.

System Diagnostic. This was a simple header that concealed the billion or so tests that could be run on the suit, including the one I needed to do most of all.

I flicked through several, pinging them and ordering they be done as soon as the priority one tasks were done.

The only one of those I ordered?

The dating of memory components.

Then I sat there for long minutes, unable to do anything else, forcing myself to watch as the system checked for the installation date, coding cycle and lifespan of the memory crystals, as well as when they were last accessed.

I stared at the blank screen wiling it to answer, to share the data to…

It flickered up, lines of code streaming into a single row of data, one that made me actually sag in relief.

The data cores, the crystals, all of it, it was original!

I’d been shitting myself that the location of Richie and Sync, that Richie had hard encoded into the computer, supposedly so deeply that nobody not a hacker could get it, besides me, would have been discarded.

I’d imagined technicians removing the carefully hidden sections of crystal and deciding that there was a blemish on it. Maybe swapping it out for a blank, crushing the original and moving on, having no clue that they’d killed my friends as well.

Instead? Laziness and the fastest solution won again.

I took a deep breath, then moved on, flicking the diagnostics to continue, but moving to the integration tests, ordering the system to run compatibility tests and more, as well as on my spinal tap.

An hour of me working through the selections, doing the tests and mentally commanding the suit—it was still held tight in the cradle, with the restraining bolt fitted, making it unable to move externally, but allowing all the impulses to be checked—and low and behold, it passed.

For long seconds after I’d tested everything I could, I simply couldn’t believe it. The system had passed the tests, my spinal tap had passed the tests, and despite it being heavily redacted? I’d even got confirmation that the model wasn’t just compatible, it was perfect for my suit.

I sat there, the final test before me, as I focused, reaching out not with any particular system, but with desire. Not the ‘I’m gonna get my end away’ kind either. No, I focused. I concentrated on what I needed, what I wanted most of all, and then I pushed that at the system I was attached to.

*Ping*

Encoded data download has begun.

*Ping*

Download complete.

I froze, reading the messages, then took a deep breath and made the call.

‎