Chapter Thirty-Four

Needless to say, the situation didn’t improve for the asshole scammers, but it did for us, quite nicely.

It turned out that the gang had been running this scam for a few weeks at least, and had hundreds of small medikits, and nearly seventy of the medium and large ones.

The elf and his friends—those who survived at least—were more than happy to spend a little time scrubbing and purging the kits they’d contaminated with their muck, and in a miraculous burst of conscience even volunteered all their credits to make up for the situation they’d created.

Luna tried contacting the kids that had started this whole chain of events for us, but considering she was reaching out to them to arrange to transfer the credits over, and they started demanding more? Saying that we owed them half of everything we got, as we’d never have gotten anything if not for them?

Luna told them to get fucked and enjoy paying off the gang.

When she shared out the credits between us all, I totally agreed, little shits seemed to think we owed them something for them being stupid enough to be scammed like that. Sure, it wasn’t nice, but out of all of it, they’d gone into it thinking they were ripping off the merchant, so they deserved whatever came to them.

We took the filled kits we’d gotten so far, minus a selection for ourselves of course, and sold the majority to Oshbob, then headed over to a place the Lion recommended, having the entire collection of empty and supposedly ‘clean’ kits scrubbed again by a service that actually did it properly.

It cost a grand total of a credit per kit, and considering the gunk they ejected? It was worth it.

From there, we hit up two more minor jobs for the guild, clearing out a few dozen specters at each of them, and harvesting the bodies afterwards.

It was beginning to look like a ‘rinse and repeat’ day, when Reign sent a general call through the small group tac-net.

“Behind us, where the piled mattresses and the plastic sheeting is thickest, don’t look, but we have an issue.”

“What’s up?” I asked, slowly rising from the crouch I’d been sitting in, the claws of my left hand retracting as I stopped the syphon, expecting an attack.

“Remember Borrolet?” Reign asked, and I frowned.

“The name’s vaguely familiar…” I admitted, running a search, and grunting a second later. “The half goblin from the cooling tower run, from Liolet’s team?”

“Yeah,” Reign spat. “Liolet kicked her out, caught her trying to threaten one of the new hires, and didn’t take it well.”

“So?”

“So I think she followed us here,” Reign growled, sending us all a still shot from her cameras.

The face peeking out of the pile of gear wasn’t that familiar to me, hell, a lot of goblins looked the same, and while she was a half goblin, she was also hiding as best she could, had filth smeared on her face, and I’d seen only a handful of times.

I ran a comparison though—thank the gods of blood and chrome for my RI—and grunted again as it came back. “Ninety-six percent likelihood that it’s her.” I sent in the group. “RI did a comparison based on my previous visuals of her. You think she saw me harvesting the specters?”

“I’m sure of it, and she’s talking to someone right now.”

“Shit.” I snarled. That was all we needed, to have word get out before we were ready.

“How do we deal with this?” Luna asked. “She’d followed us, recorded us, as I’m betting that’s what the device is, and she’s reporting on us?”

“We confront her and find out what the shit is going on,” I ordered, turned to face Borrolet in her hiding place.

As soon as she saw she’d been seen, rather than do the sensible thing, and come out, she ran for it.

That was the worst of all possible outcomes for me, even as I ordered Gessh to catch her. If she’d been doing anything that she thought was even slightly defensible? She’d not have fucking run.

Considering she was apparently recording us, yeah it was weird, but that was it. Nothing illegal about it, and at worst, she’d have had to just say that she was curious about our methods and wanted to study them.

Hell, she could have just told us to fuck off, that there were no laws against her recording us. She’d have been right.

Instead she ran for it like her arse was on fire, and as Gessh closed the distance? She pulled out a flashbang.

“Don’t do it!” Luna roared at the goblin, only a handful of strides behind her sister, but it was too late.

Borrolet triggered the grenade, dumped it a few seconds later and took a corner, darting out of sight.

A second later the grenade went off, and those of us giving chase were momentarily blinded and deafened, the grenade giving off a low level chaff field that made it difficult for electronic measure to get though.

I was still reeling from it, when gunfire rang out somewhere ahead, followed by an answering burst from Gessh’s shotgun.

“Fuck!” I snarled, shaking my head to free it of the lingering effects of that shit, and picking up the pace again, racing after the sisters.

The corner that they’d gone down was a right, followed by a left pretty much straight away, then a second right, the doglegs of corridors down here under a clothing shop making damn sure there was little space.

I took the final corner, and found Gessh hissing in pain, as Luna stabbed her in the shoulder with a small medikit, the crumpled body of Borrolet laid in the middle of the corridor, her gun still in her hand.

“Bitch shot me when I took the corner.” Gessh groaned, as Luna held the skin together for the nanites, glaring down at the little body of Borrolet.

“Why?” I wondered, a sinking feeling in my stomach. “And are you alright?”

“Yeah, it’s a through and through,” Luna replied grimly. “Armor piercing round, no guesses why she was loaded with them.”

I checked on Gessh, getting a grunt and being waved away as I stepped around her, moving to the body that was even now leaking blood into the corridor.

I turned her over, seeing the pain and fear that was now etched into her face as well as the hole that had passed through the middle of her chest, destroying the heart entirely. Gessh had gone for her own gun, that was understandable, being fired upon, but the difference between the small but admittedly high powered handgun round, and the shotgun solid slug, were light years apart.

I picked up the recording device, then flicked off the broadcast button, severing the link to who, or whatever it’d been sending it to, before trying to play it back.

The recording asked for authorization, and when I hesitated, then tried Borrolet’s thumb? It wiped itself. It wasn’t even subtle about it, there was a crackle, then then entire device grew insanely hot. I threw it aside, and smoke started to rise, wafting around the narrow confines.

“Now what the hell do we do?” I asked the group, totally confused, as I started searching her little body.

“We report it,” Reign said grimly.

“To ACE?”

“Fuck no!” Reign snorted. “Why the hell would we involve those bastards? No, we need to report this to Julius, he needs to know about it, and whatever was going on here? It’s best it comes from us.”

“You don’t think she was working for him?” I asked.

“What, to see what we were doing?” She shook her head. “He gets access to the recordings and knows what we’re doing anyway, more or less. It’s not like he needed to spy on us, hell he could just ask and he knows we’re invested enough we’d just tell him. If anything? He wants to know less about the shit we’re up to.”

“You want to tell him?” I tried, looking at Reign. “You’re his friend after all.”

“And you’re the team lead,” she pointed out, shaking her head. “No this needs to come from you.”

“I know.” I groaned, straightening up, then triggering the call, and hoping, just praying, that we were too deep to get a signal, and that maybe… nope.

The call went straight through, and my last hopes were dashed, as I accepted that whatever she’d been doing, it’d been done.

“Sarge!” Julius answered, grinning in my virtual vision as the connection went through. “Tell me you’re calling for another job? I’ve just had one reported and…”

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“Julius?” I interrupted.

“… it’s a good one, you know? It’s by an ex-military store that—yeah?” He broke off, finally seeing my face and realizing this wasn’t going to be a good call. “Fuck Kabutt, what’s wrong?”

“Borrolet,” I said. “Did you send her to follow us?”

“Who?” He asked frowning. “Wait, half goblin Borrolet? Little sneaky fucker?”

“Yeah.” I sighed, knowing what was coming, and believing him.

“No, why would I send her to do anything? Hell, she’s been booted from Liolet’s crew, and she’s back in the reserves, why?”

“She followed us,” I said. “Reign spotted her recording us stripping the specters…”

“Crap.”

“…and when she realized we’d spotted her? She ran for it.”

“You didn’t hurt her did you?” Julius asked. “Look Kabutt, I know it’s bad form but…”

“She’s dead.” I cut him off. “She ran, then dropped a flashbang, then hid around a corner and fired on us, point blank with armor piercing. One of my team shot back, in self defense.”

“Fuck!” he cursed, shaking his head in disbelief. “Ah shit man that’s screwed it.”

“She fired first!” I snapped.

“Yeah, she did, but you’ve been with the guild less than a fucking week, Kabutt, and you’ve shot and killed another guild member. There’s going to be an investigation.”

“You’re shitting me!”

“I’m not,” he snapped back. “Fuck’s sake man, if it’s as you say? Sure, nothing to come of it, but you’ve still been with us less than a week! You kill another guild member and I wave it off? What does that say about the guild? That as long as the boss trusts you it doesn’t matter? No, not in my guild, not on my watch.” He glared at me, then shook his head. “Tell me you were still recording.”

“Not sure to be honest…,” I admitted. “I know I’d stopped mine, I’ll have to check the others.”

“Right.” He growled. “So all I’ve got is your word then? For all I know you took her down there with you and shot her to get rid of her and hide something she saw…”

“Julius,” I said quietly, but he paused, clearly getting the tone. “We were testing hardware.”

“Fuck, on a client site? This is so gonna get messy. What was it?”

“I’m not saying, but she was recording us, and when she died? The recording caught fire. Someone sent her after us, filming us, and was fucking after something. They got it, whatever it was.”

“You’re sure they got it?” he asked, after a few seconds of quiet.

“Yeah, fairly,” I admitted. “I’m calling you from right by her body now, so the broadcast got out, unless she wasn’t backing it up, but you know. My luck’s so fantastic I’m not even going to hope for that.”

“So what we’ve got is a situation where one guild crew, who are already getting complained about, by the way—”

“What? By who?”

“—that getting complained about as getting juicy assignments and let off for things, have killed a member of the recruits,” he finished shaking his head that he wasn’t going to answer my question. “Now yeah, Borrolet was on a warning, and yeah, she was a goblin. Let’s look at this from another point of view though, and maybe you’ll understand why I want you to hand over your entire recording to me. Not just the guild one you stopped.”

“Isn’t happening,” I said.

“It is, because if it doesn’t.” he said, “you’re out of the guild.” He let that sink in for a few seconds. “Sure, you can do without us, hell, you’d be picked up on your first call right now I bet, but they’re not going to give you the cover you need to recover your friends from the fingers now, are they? You need me and my guild, Kabutt, so listen up.

“The reason I need to do an investigation? It’s not that I don’t trust you. It’s not that when, not if, but when Trees and his friends find out and cause a stink about it, we need to be totally above board. It’s because a slightly different point of view on what’s happened is this. Maybe—and to be clear I don’t believe this, but someone will suggest it if we don’t, and we need to be able to prove it wasn’t this—you took her down there as a trial. Maybe you decided you wanted services she wasn’t willing to give you, and maybe you and your team had a little fun, then shot her.”

“Fuck’s sake, Julius,” I growled, shaking my head. “You know…”

“I know Reign wouldn’t,” he said. “I’ve known her for years. For the record? I don’t think you, Todds or the sisters would either, but I have to see it from all angles. You want me to sort this out and get you and the team reinstated and fast?”

“Yeah.” I growled, furious, and yet when he’d suggested it that way, knowing that there had to have been incidents that gave rise to such a detailed description of the possibilities, I couldn’t blame him as well. “Just… tell me that its only you that’ll see what we were doing?”

“Nope,” he said. “It’ll be a tribunal, three team leaders with me seeing the file, and they’ll be volunteers. You better believe Trees will volunteer after your history with him, so unless there’s three others that do, expect him to be watching it. If I can avoid him applying? Great, but if I have to do a second call for volunteers?” He shook his head.

“Great. Can you cut out…?”

“No, I need the entire recording,” he said grimly. “No sections cut, no sections blurred, the entire thing.”

“Fuck.” I growled, shaking my head. “Honestly, I don’t know if I can,” I said after a few seconds, and stifling the urge to kick the pathetic little corpse laid on the floor before me. “What we’re testing… its under NDA’s. Like ‘cut your own throat after reading’ level of NDAs.”

“Shit. Who with?”

“Can’t say,” I said. “Look I can share most of the recordings, not the sections near the specters corpses for the testing we’re doing, but the sections all around it, including Reign spotting Borrolet, and then her using the grenade, then chase, all up to this conversation.”

“I…” He hung his head. “Send me what you’ve got and get out of there. I’m on my way over, or I will be in two minutes, as soon as I’ve got another team lead to act as a witness. I hope we get a friendly group, Kabutt, because if we don’t? You’re out, and we’re all fucked again.”

“Understood. I’ll scrub the sections you can’t see and send it now.”

With that I cut the call, and turned to the others, explaining the situation as quickly and concisely as I could, before using my RI to doctor the recording, tactically blurring the sections around the specters, making sure it was clear that literally everything else was there, and that the only section that was hidden was the specters.

I didn’t have any great hopes that it would be helpful, but at least it was as hidden as it was.

We left the site, leaving the mods as well—we’d not harvested them yet, so that was a relief, at least there was less effort required there—and we summoned a cab, heading back to the warehouse, dropping Todds off on the way.

“So now what?” Luna asked eventually.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Until this blows over, I guess if we’re specter hunting, it’s on our own time.”

“Shit, I was liking how much we were getting.” Gessh groaned. “So we’re off duty while they figure this shit out?”

“Basically,” I sighed. “Maybe we could…”

“Damn!” Reign groaned, covering her face with her hands. “That’s it!”

“What?”

“With us benched and at least three team leads involved in an inquiry? That’s Julius down four teams. It’s not like he can send those teams out without their leads after all.”

“So?”

“So it’s fucking Trees!” she snapped. “Or someone else that’s trying to fuck the guild over. We just went through the roof with contracts, and they have to be honored, take four teams out of the rotation after they’ve just accepted the contracts? Smaller teams need to step in and take the load, if they get taken down? The guild looks shit again, and the debts that Julius was paying off? There’ll be non-completion fines and more. Hell, I bet if he checks some of the contracts, there’ll be insanely high fines for not doing the job.”

“So, you’re saying we were set up, and Borrolet was a tactical sacrifice?” I groaned, rubbing the bridge of my nose. “I fucking hate this shit, can’t he just fuck off and go back to drowning kittens or whatever he did for shits and giggles?”

“And if you go after him now? He’s covered. You’d be banned, as would we, and you better believe he’s hoping you do,” Reign added, jumping ahead as I started fantasizing about beating the fucker to death in a dark alley.

“I know.” I sighed. “Right, we’re nearly back at the warehouse, I need to check on things with the suit and…”

“Dondo messaged,” Luna said suddenly, wincing that she’d clearly forgotten to include this. “He says they’ve tracked down the right arm for the suit. He says the price is a hundred and seventy thousand.”

“Tell him to bring it over,” I forced out between gritted teeth, knowing damn well that it’d be the fucking arm that the suit had been fitted with. Again, for just a second, I wondered if Oshbob’s people had stolen it, then dismissed it again, there was just no way, not realistically.

I was just damn lucky that the orc was smart enough to see the advantage of working with me, rather than trying to steal the suit and selling it.

Speaking of which, I’d been paying for the parts he’d brought to us so far, mainly because we’d not had the gear ready yet, but the deal was that he’d run a tab for the parts, that I’d pay it with nanites and specter or merc targets we harvested the parts from.

It was time to get ourselves back on track.

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