“So…this is the little love nest, eh?” Gessh muttered, looking around my tiny, shitty apartment, and I snorted.

“Yeah. It’s just wonderful, isn’t it.”

“It’s…memorable.” Luna kicked at the end of the couch. “I don’t think I’ve ever been somewhere that made our place look like a step up, not that still had four walls and a roof, anyway.”

“Don’t ask about the stains on the couch.” Reign sighed. “He insisted I was on it, and you know, when one thing led to another…”

She broke off, bouncing her eyebrows a little, and Luna and Gessh looked at the couch, noting various stains I’d ignored, having never paid that much attention to it.

“It’s true,” I agreed, picking my bag up and dumping it on the couch. “Those stains are from last night…from where Reign drooled and farted all night long. Now, if you’re all done with slagging my place off, how about we sort this gear?”

“I guess I see why you were so happy to agree to us all getting a place somewhere now,” Gessh muttered, and I sighed, mumbling that they weren’t supposed to figure that shit out yet, playing along.

There was a general low level of snorts and laughter, and that quickly broke up when I pulled out the guns.

“We’ve got three targets to hit, each of which is likely to have a little loot as well, but the good gear? It’ll be with the assassin, I bet.”

“Everything from mines to turrets, sniping gear and stealth suits,” Reign agreed, all business again. “He’s a legend, and there’s no way he’d have shitty gear.”

“So we sort ourselves out now, gear up as if we’re not coming back here. We take them down, and any loot we take? If it’s worth stashing, then we can come back. If not, we’ve got a lot to do tonight, and we return here before going after the assassin.”

“So load up, but keep it light,” Luna quipped, nodding.

“Basically,” I agreed. “I’d suggest we collect like equipment together first, then kit up…it’ll make it easier.”

“Shotguns on the bed.” Gessh pulled three out of her bag and dumped them on the bed, passing an assault rifle to Luna, who dumped it on the couch, as we emptied bags.

It only took a few minutes, most of which was spent sorting ammo out as much as anything else, as we’d grabbed a shitload of magazines as well as the actual weapons, and they’d all gotten jumbled up together.

In the end, though, the loadout was good for all of us.

I had my MADD grenade, which the others had stared at in horror as I explained about it, taking it out to show them. They’d all backed the fuck up at that point, despite my protestations that they were safe, as it was either from a “decent” batch, or we’d already all be dead.

That wasn’t apparently happy making, though, so I moved straight along.

I had two flash-bangs, two frags, and a sticky, as well as the MADD, and the others all had roughly the same. Luna and Gessh went for a single flash, but three frags each, and Reign went for the single recon grenade, the EMP, and the last two flashes.

We also had an incendiary. But on closer inspection, the damn seal on it was rusty as fuck, and we decided to leave that alone, putting it in the gun cabinet. My spare ammo and the other shotgun and shitty rifle came out as well, and were added to the mix.

My automatic shotgun—it could be fired on full auto or single shot, and I loved it—stayed with me, with a few more fléchettes and slug rounds taking me back up to full on both magazines for it.

Gessh and Luna had both bought shotguns yesterday, and they kept those, along with their swords—I had my vibro-blade as well as the hatchet—and all three of us had rifles as well.

For me, it wasn’t so bad. The assault rifle was a bullpup design, compact and fucking lethal, but being a Centronics Five, it was fucking beautiful as well. There were a dozen aftermarket mods for it: the stock could be lengthened, the barrel replaced, and the receiver upgraded, then a new set of optics and you had anything from a machine gun to a fucking sniper rifle, all off the same base model.

I’d used them in the army before I qualified for APS, and it’d only been the Centronics Two we’d had. We’d loved them, though, and I made it clear as I set it down by my side—not with the other guns—that it was mine.

Luna had taken a pair of submachine guns, both with great long banana mags in them, a nice chest rig that held four more mags, and her shotty cradled in her arms, with the subs going one under each arm.

Gessh went for the grazer rifle, much to Reign’s disappointment, but it was only fair really. It only had a single reload for the grazer, but with two hundred shots per mag, that was fine.

She also took the unsubtle hand cannon I’d looted from Lilith’s bodyguard, and I nodded my blessing for it.

I had my own hurricane revolver back again after all, and it was currently plugged into the wall, merrily charging.

Last but not least was Reign. Her dual sniper rifles—the grazer and her original slug—were insane enough on the slim half-elf, but the chest rig with the grenades hanging from it made it clear she was all business, as did the twin Styx suppressed auto pistols.

They were fléchette pistols, crap for any long-range targets, but she had the rifles for that, admittedly. The fléchettes magazines each held a hundred individual darts, short steel fuckers that were fired at a horrific speed.

They were useless at anything over about twenty meters, their stabilizing fins being susceptible to wind, magnetism, and more. But if you were up close and someone unloaded one of those fuckers? They’d clear a room.

All in all, we were armed to the teeth. We had some spare ammo—not much, but enough, we agreed, considering we were after gangers.

The armor we’d looted was less impressive. I’d improved on my gloves, replacing my main body armor that was starting to give out with a full front and back dragon-scale design that ran halfway down my arms, ending at the elbows for some reason, and a long, cool as fuck-looking laser-resistant trench coat.

The mirrored finish it needed for that was less impressive, making me look like I might be on my way to a fucking party, rather than a slaughter, but hey.

The girls upgraded to full-face helmets with integrated optics, and new boots that they’d liked. And Reign…well, she swore blind that she was happy with her current gear. That might have been something to do with the armored chainmail top that Gessh was trying to get her to try on, but the comment that there was no way it could defend, while covering basically her nipples only, was a fair one.

Upon closer examination, it was found to be a shield projector, so it was actually a damn good bit of armor, all things considered. But because of the way these things worked, anything that broke the field would drain the battery, therefore, yeah, it needed to be set against bare flesh.

I actually considered it when she offered it to me, thinking that if I wore it under my armor, and powered it only at the worst part of the fight, it might last long enough to do some good.

Then I reconsidered, based purely on the suggestion from Luna that she was sure there was a matching thong option. I’d never live it down, going into battle in essentially a chainmail bikini, regardless of how effective or useful it might be.

We looked at one another, and there was silence for a long few seconds, before I spoke.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“Look, seriously, I know this isn’t what you signed up for,” I said. “You’ve all got your own shit, and yeah, while this helps us all? It’s me who gains the most from it, and I can’t even promise you my share of the creds, as I damn well need them for the last stage tonight.

“I guess…I guess what I’m trying to say is that if you want to walk away now? No hard feelings. I totally understand.” I paused, and all three kept staring at me, as I smiled ruefully.

“Well, thank you,” I said. “We’re a team—you’re all risking your asses for me, and I’ll do the same for you.”

“Well, look, boss, you’re making it sound like it’s all altruism here, but let’s be honest,” Reign said with a faint quirk of her lips. “I’m a homeless bum, with little chance of a normal team. Since I joined you, I got my grazer, which I wanted for like foreverrrr.” She drew the last word out long, and batted her eyelashes, fanning herself with one hand while the others laughed. “I mean, be still my beating heart! If this thing had a vibrator optional attachment? I’d marry it.”

“And we’re…well.” Luna grunted, shrugging.

“You’ve never been a dick about who and what we are,” Gessh said. “You gave us a chance, and yeah, this isn’t what the damn guild was advertising the job as, but we’re mercs. You’re offering us what could be a serious payday. That it might not come off and we might all die? That’s kinda part of the territory.”

“Thank you all.” I nodded to them, then gathered up the guns that were left over and stacked them as well as I could in the gun safe.

It said a lot that although the apartment came with fuck all furnishings, it’d come with a built-in gun safe, and that after less than a week of living here, the one thing that was getting real use wasn’t the shower—it’d had normal use, but you know—nor the bed. It was the gun safe.

It was also full, and I left a handful of rifles on the bed, along with some ammo, and took the last of the mods—ones I wasn’t giving to Lucky but taking direct to Lion as soon as I could—into a bag, before forcing the safe’s lock to engage.

That done, I turned to the others again.

“Okay then.” I grinned. “Only a few floors up, and we get to go shoot some drug dealers in the face.”

“Ah, the simple pleasures in life!” Reign quipped, before bowing low and gesturing to the door. “Lead on, good sir!”

“Fucking elves…” I muttered, deliberately loud enough for the others to hear it. “Dramatic to the end…”

“Your end certainly,” Reign joked, eyeing my ass, and I groaned, popping the door and walking out without another word.

The trip along the corridors was silent. As much as the joking had made us all feel a little less on edge, the reality was that we were walking into a firefight, and that there was a good chance some, if not all of us, would die tonight.

We’d done all we could, in terms of gear, planning, and mental readiness, to mitigate that risk, but when all we had was a random location tag, there wasn’t much we could do with planning.

We were in the lift, when the first bit of good news I’d had in literally ages dropped into my lap, followed by some bad.

“Kabutt,” Lucky said, the call having come literally seconds after the doors to the lift closed. The fucker laid there, sprawled across his couch, a blanket draped over him as he relaxed, ignoring us. The crossed legs that peeked out of the bottom of the blanket suggested that he was doing anything but “relaxing.”

I’d seen it, seen the way he was laying, with his eyes almost—but not quite—shut and I’d known damn well he wanted us to interrupt, to ask a question, anything, just so he could tell us to fuck off.

Instead, we’d treated him with the respect he deserved, and totally ignored him, marching past the few people still hanging around, and dragging a pair of doped-up idiots out of the lift and tossing them onto the floor as we climbed in.

“What do you want?” I asked Lucky, glancing at his image, and getting a hurt look from him.

“I bring news, and I wanted to wish you good luck, that’s all.”

“Go,” I replied flatly.

“Sirisena, your second target, is involved in the supply of drugs for five floors…” He paused, and when I said nothing, he shrugged and moved on. “He’s currently attacking the last of Lilith’s guards on the market floor, and it looks like he’s going to take the chemist. If you’re quick, you can take him from behind.”

“Not my favorite, but serviceable,” I admitted. “Question.”

“Yeah?”

“What’ll he do with the chemist?”

“What?”

“The chemist, their kit and all that shit—what’ll they do with them?”

“He’ll take them back to the eighty-fifth floor and add them to his team, take the gear, set it all up and make them start producing. Why?”

“Will they go straight there after taking the guards out?”

“Probably…They’ll not know who to trust, so rather than watch over the entire floor, they’ll have some gonk ready to load it all up, then they’ll run back to their base. They’ll be expecting you or someone else to hit them, so you better move fast…”

“Nope,” I said firmly, as the lift farted and slowed. The doors started to open. On the other side, I could see dozens, if not hundreds, of people sprinting for the doors. The reaction when they started to open, to show a bunch of heavily armed and armored mercs?

People tried to go from full forward sprint to backward in the same second, with the result that dozens of them simply hit the floor, bouncing, tripping, and screaming.

Distant echoing gunfire could be heard, and I surprised the others by reaching out and pressing the button for the eighty-fifth floor instead.

“I thought…” started Reign, only for Lucky to speak over her, his voice in my ear thanks to the call, and so I responded to them all at once.

“Look, they’re here, taking all the shit they want, which is great. But that means they’re not where their chemist is. They’ve split their forces, and they’re out in the open.

“We need to get their chemist and the one from this floor, then Saracen…?”

“Sirisena.” Lucky corrected with a growl.

“Yeah, fine. Sirisena is going to return home soon. No point in fighting them here, then going for their base, and having to make two trips with everything. Far better we hit their base, secure their chemist and all their shit, as well as their supplies, then we kill them when they come back.”

“You’re evil,” Reign said after a few seconds. “You know it won’t be that easy. They’ll warn Sirisena as soon as we attack them.”

“They will,” I agreed. “The difference is that Sirisena will have to either abandon the new chemist and gear, which they probably won’t want to risk, or they’ll bring them along. We let them bring them—we get all the loot, we get the chemist brought to us, and we save time overall.”

“It’s…it’s ballsy, but it’s a sound plan,” Luna said, and the others agreed, smiles all around.

“So…you said there was news. That it?” I asked Lucky, only to get a shake of the head.

“Not all of it. I sent the details for the gear you brought tonight to Oshbob. He wants to meet you.”

“That’s nice,” I said, having no interest in meeting him at the minute. I needed this deal with Lucky to be well and truly dealt with first, and to approach the orc from a position of strength.

“Ten tomorrow morning at his place. I’m to take you,” he said, and I glared at him.

“I leave in six hours.”

“You said that an hour ago.”

“I meant five.”

“Bullshit.”

“Watch me be gone in six hours.”

“You better not be,” Lucky growled, and I smiled at him.

“Tell you what?” I purred. “I’ll stay for the meeting…”

“That’s be—”

“As long as we survive the encounter with Stinger anyway.”

“Fuck…No, that’s not gonna work.”

I snorted. “Lucky, I’m doing that job, or I leave tonight. Your options are you risk Oshbob being pissed because I leave and he can take that out on you, or being really happy because I take down Stinger.”

“Kabutt…” Lucky growled.

I forced myself not to laugh, knowing the position he was in right now. He either accepted me claiming that bounty and then going to see Oshbob, who was almost certainly going to cut Lucky out of the deal from now on, or he hit me after all and let Oshbob be pissed.

“I’ll make it easier for you…partner,” I said, drawing the word out. “I’m going after that bounty tonight because I need a hundred thousand in creds. If you want me to not go after Stinger? You transfer that over, and you can explain why later. If not? Then I’m going after Stinger, and when I kill him, I’ll have extra mods to sell to Oshbob, as we agreed the rifle and his head was yours, nothing else. So tomorrow, either I’ll be there with Stinger’s mods for Oshbob, or I’ll be dead, or I’ll be gone. You pick. Now I need to go, so make your mind up fast.”

I cut the connection, the last sight of Lucky the rage in his eyes, and I nodded, speaking to the girls quietly.

“I’m betting he’s going to—” A final datapacket came through from Lucky. Stinger’s location, under the fucking arcology, six floors down by the main reactor. “Well,” I said slowly, sharing the details with the others. “I guess that means no explosives then, and it’s game on.”

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 – Location attached]

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

“All the way, boss,” Luna said.

I looked at her, only to hear the strangled attempt at a fart ring out again.

“I swear, if that’s the last sound I hear, I’m coming back to haunt you all.”

Luna growled, and I grinned, unseen in my helmet.

“Okay, kids.” I took a deep breath. “Game faces on.”