The girls hadn’t liked my plan, not really, and they’d spent some time reworking it, as we waited on the cab, breaking off only when struck by some new level of perverse madness. I stuck my head in to remind the lying dickhead in the office that “client reviews are important to us, so please, be sure to mark down how you felt my team did.”
Lucky hadn’t been happy when I’d called him from the cab either, having expected me to be telling him I was going after one of his targets, and when I told him that I would be, just not until I’d done one more job?
Not a happy bunny.
Or, you know, giant grumpy half-orc gang leader.
When his four people showed up? I was sitting on a bench across from the guild house, well aware I was being watched, and having already fended off several pings and identity grabbers.
Something about the kind of group the guild was meant that when a totally innocent guy sat on a bench across from their guild house and just waited, they got worried for some reason.
It might have been because I was concealing my identity, or possibly because I was heavily armed. It also might have been because I was holding Reign’s grazer, fully loaded, charged and ready.
But whatever the reason was, the two orcs on door duty were pulled in and replaced by a pair of meatheads I recognized.
The one on the left was particularly memorable, as that fucker had booted me in the balls at one point, and I really needed to reply in kind to him.
Regardless, though, while I sat there, they practically ignored everyone else.
That included Reign as she walked up and in, pausing as the guards asked her a few questions, before waving her in as business as usual.
Once the four gangbangers showed up, clearly high as hell on something, and at least partly drunk, I settled back, waiting.
The guards on the door watched me, then the gang members, then back to me, clearly seeing the change in my attitude, and they geared up, ready.
The first of Lucky’s gang members—an utterly terrible actor, even by the standards I’d been expecting—stopped and asked about joining up. Then, when he was, surprise, surprise, told to fuck off, he acted about as predictably as possible.
He tried to stab the guard, who was in full body armor.
The knife hit his abdomen, and they all stared at it, then the ganger, then the knife, then the ganger…before all hell broke loose.
They knew something was going on, they knew it, but they were gangers themselves not that long ago, and they still had the scars to show it.
That these fucks actually dared to stab them? Worse, that the level of stupidity shown was so fucking insane?
Best of all, as far as they were concerned, was that I stood…and got into a cab at that point.
That changed the dynamic totally. I’d hyped the guild up, expecting that something, probably a rival guild, was about to attack them, then I fucked off? That I got them all hyped and ready for a fight, then I left?
That just sent them off the deep end.
The gangers were dragged inside. One was dead already, having been fed his own knife. The other three had pulled a variety of weapons ranging from shock knuckles—useless against someone in armor—another knife—yup, still useless—to a low-caliber handgun—practically useless. And last of all?
A length of lead piping.
As I’d left, the guards told anyone nearby to fuck off, and locked the doors, activating the heavy-duty protective grates over the door.
The end result, as I got the cab to stop out of sight around the corner and got back out, was that the people already inside were hurried out of the back door and shoved into the street, along with the cashiers and general staff.
That last group, used to this kind of thing, were ordered to wait.
Reign, being—as mentioned a time or two—a highly attractive half-elf, had struck up a conversation with one of the staff, and was told to “wait right there,” while he sent the others away. He apparently thought he was about to get a blow in the alley in exchange for a preferential chance at any high-earning jobs.
I jogged back to the building. A message from the girls showed on my Key as I got closer.
Sounds like a bad day to be in a gang. We’re in place.
I almost felt bad for the four thugs I’d sent in, but I reminded myself that they were scum as well, and given half the chance, they’d be on the giving side of the attack, with absolutely no qualms.
Getting closer, I looped around to the rear entrance just as Reign gave up on trying to persuade the object of her affections to open the door for her to “use the loo.”
Instead, she sighed, smiled, and kneed him in the balls. That action rammed his face into the scanner and pressed her handgun into the back of his head, and she whispered that all she needed was his ident.
He apparently decided that he’d like to keep his head attached, and provided the necessary details that the hacker Bowdoin requested.
Entering the guild house had been the weakest part of my plan, I freely admitted that, and the girls had essentially torn me a new asshole over the plan I’d had.
Another call to the hacker, a quick meetup, and the Zentrades, Xz45 Black Cyber Widow datadeck we’d gotten in the depths of the bio-farm had a new owner.
We, in turn, had remote access to the door here, and a small plugin each—one that, as long as we plugged it into the main servers for the guild, would end a great many of our troubles.
Reign led the way inside, taking her grazer from me, and I nodded to her, more than ready for what was to come.
“Girls are ready,” I said.
She lifted her head in acknowledgment.
“I got the message too,” she reminded me.
I nodded again, my heart hammering.
“You ready for this?”
“Fuck, no.” She grinned, pulling her mask down to cover her face and making sure her spoofed corpo ident was broadcasting. “Shall we?”
“Let’s!” I agreed, before moving.
The alley had led into a simple backroom. It had once been a kitchen from the look of the place, but it’d been long since stripped of any cooking equipment; the fire door and old brackets and so on gave away its original use.
The next door led to a corridor, one that ran around the back of the building, and we moved quickly, not taking the easy exit into the main room—oh no, not yet.
This was a gang that’d had access to a fuckload of money of late, and as such—the paranoid bastards that they were—they’d bought turrets and more into the main area of the guild, set up ready to take out any threat.
Reign and I split up, me moving through the side rooms for a quick search, and her darting up the stairs, starting to search the second floor.
The screams and pleading from the gangers out in the main area were dying off, and I knew we didn’t have long.
“It’ll be a decent bank of servers, I’d think. Nobody’s going to put their security systems on the web without corpo cybersec, not anyone who knows that they’re doing anyway,” Bowdoin had babbled earlier, unable to take his eyes off the deck.
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I’d waved it back and forth, watching the way his eyes moved, tracking it.
“You need to be fucking sure about this,” I’d growled at him. “This will give me control of their security systems? All of them?”
“I think so,” he’d hedged. “Look, all I can do is tell you what should happen, okay? If they have their security systems hardwired into a central server? And if you plug this in—direct, mind you, not into a secondary system or a firewalled network slot, but directly into the server? Yeah, it should accept you as the registered keeper. That’s if they don’t have a dedicated defensive RI or an AI. If they do? You’re fucked. Sorry, but it’s that simple.”
“There’s nothing you can do?” I’d asked, and he’d shaken his head.
“Look, if I was there? Ready and waiting? I might be able to get you around an RI, if I get lucky and it’s a low-tier one. As it is, by remote using a cracker and just programming in a brute force attack? Nope.”
“We could take him with us,” Reign had suggested.
“Not if you want me to sort that address and the details out for you tonight.” Bowdoin had shaken his head. “You want me doing this or that? I can’t do both…and I’m already not happy about the possibilities of turning their own security against them.”
“Why not?” Reign had asked, leaning against the wall and looking him over, letting loose a little smile that utterly failed to work on him.
“Don’t even bother.” He flicked his hood back to show his ears.
“Another fucking half-elf,” I groaned.
“Hey, you want my help or not?” he snapped.
“If you can keep from fucking someone long enough, yeah,” I grumbled, watching him.
“Right. Look, the security system here is going to be yours if this works, but it’s not going to just open fire on the guild or whatever. It’ll only do that if you’re attacked, or if you order it to, so that’s all on you, okay? I’m not setting this to kill anyone, but what you do with it? That’s your business.”
“Works for me.” Reign stepped forward and took the datadeck from me, handing it to him and taking the two small devices, passing one to me and pocketing the other.
“If we live? We’ll be in touch,” she promised.
“And if you don’t?” he’d called after us as we walked away.
“Well, clearly we fucking won’t!” I’d called back, shaking my head at Reign. “Fucking hackers. I swear, they live in a different world from the rest of us.”
Now, with us running from room to room, frantically searching for what some idiot hacker had described they’d probably have somewhere?
It wasn’t going well.
I skidded to a halt, eyes darting back and forth as I tried to pick out anything that looked like a server rack.
I had a mental image of those massive machines in vids that ran the defensive city AIs and so on, or the old-school machines in vids of the past.
A modern “defensive security system server”?
It could be anything, he’d said, showing us a variety of machines quickly.
Some had looked like old computers, all flashing lights and cabling, others were practically organic, and nowhere I looked was there fuckin’ anything like the shit that pointy-eared bastard had shown me.
Reign was up on the next level, and I raced back to the stairs, sprinting up them after her as the first of the bodies was dragged to the concealed air lock in the floor.
I took the steps two at a time, leaping from the landing to the next set and skidding. I bounced off the wall, heard a scuffle ahead and saw Reign staggering sideways as a man in full stealth gear grappled with her.
I cursed as shouts rang out from below, and the sound of running feet, even as I yanked the HK-TT slug thrower out of its holster.
It was one of those insane guns that you saw from time to time, designed more for overt threat than actual utility. Pulling the trigger, I was damn glad I’d set my wrist and had been expecting the recoil, as otherwise?
It’d have snapped my damn wrist.
The slug that it fired, from a handgun no less, was bigger than most heavy-duty breeching shotguns could manage, and the hole that appeared in the side of the stealth idiot’s head made it clear that it packed a punch.
It also sent his corpse flying, hands releasing the garrote that he’d been using on her. She collapsed to the floor, clutching at her throat and gasping, even as I turned, cursing.
“You motherfuckers don’t know who you’re messing with! Fucking trying to rob us!” a voice screamed up from below, and I cursed again, longer and louder this time.
They weren’t just aware we were there; they had control of the security systems as well. I twisted and searched the ceiling and walls quickly, yanking the gun around and firing once, destroying the camera on the wall to my left as it swiveled.
The turret that slid out of the ceiling farther down the corridor, I missed with the first shot, but the second took it in the barrel, causing it to explode when it tried to fire. I spun, looking hurriedly for any others.
I relaxed for a half second when I couldn’t see them, then grabbed a soft drink can from the side, tossing it down the stairs with a bank shot that sent it clattering off the walls, even as I shouted, “Frag out!” after it.
Screams and shouts rose below, quickly followed by cursing as they realized that the item they’d all shit themselves over, and that had caused them to go running…was a synth-cola can.
The clattering of feet on the stairs paused as I threw another can, shouting the same again. I grabbed Reign and dragged her to her feet, snagging one of her actual grenades—she wasn’t using it, after all—and pulling the activation ring on it.
This one I rolled down the corridor, shouting after it, “Grenade! Honest!”
This time, they kept coming as we darted into a room. I had to imagine there was a hell of a look on the guy’s face who was first to find out that it was an actual grenade.
I missed it, just hearing the muffled explosion, the sounds of sharpened fragments slamming into reinforced walls and screams of pain.
“Fucking told you so!” I bellowed down the corridor, before grabbing someone’s lunch container and closing it, then flinging that around the corner into the corridor. “Probably not a grenade!” I shouted, before flinching as a boom rang out next to me.
“Tur…ret…” Reign croaked, rubbing at her throat. “Keep…’em…busy…” I nodded, and she did something to her headgear, starting to search, even as she jabbed herself in the throat with a medikit dispenser.
I frowned, thinking it was a waste to use it for such a minor wound, then shrugged. It wasn’t my kit, so fuck it. I promptly angled the handgun around the edge of the door and fired three rounds before jerking back as armor-piercing rounds punched into the doorframe where I’d been standing.
I moved quickly as more bullets slammed into the wall, making me curse.
Reign spoke up, the medikit having helped already, I guessed.
“All the cables lead into the next room,” she told me, making me glare at her, unseen in my helmet.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” I asked her.
“Electromagnetic and fiber-optic cabling. It’s running from the turrets to the wall there.” She pointed. “If it was going into a different part of the building? It’d be easier to run through the ceiling gaps.”
“So the server…”
“Next door.” She nodded. “Bowdoin told us to watch for that, remember?”
“Nope.” I bit my lip. Running into the corridor was a sure way to get a bullet in the back of the head, but something she’d said…
“Wait…ceiling gaps?” I looked up.
“The armoring only goes so high. You need cables, ventilation, and so on, it goes through the walls and ceiling.”
“Get ready to run,” I told her, nodding to the door and the next room, even as I stood on a desk, using my shotgun to smash the ceiling tiles loose.
As soon as I did? I grinned. There were long rows of cross posts for the piping to be attached to, and it took literally a couple of steps and a jump, kicking off the wall while Reign threw a flash-bang out into the corridor as a distraction, banking it off the door.
I dragged myself upward. The bracing creaked and groaned under my weight, making me move as fast as I could, expecting at any second to crash back down.
There were shouts from the corridor, threats, and some reference to my ancestors’ preference for sexual encounters with goblins and farm animals. After ten years in the APS, though, their attempts were, frankly, terrible.
I moved quickly, not bothering with stealth, as I ran, leaping from bracing to bracing, grinning over the fact that these cheap assholes had been so stupid as to armor only the lower sections, and leave what’d clearly been a high-vaulted ceiling as hidden.
I leapt onto the last section, judging that I was nearly there to the assholes, shotgun at the ready…and totally misjudged it. Crashing through the ceiling on the far side, I hit the far wall and bounced off, not even facing the right direction. I appeared behind the assholes, hit the wall…and fell down the stairwell.
“Fuuuuuck!” I screamed, pulling the trigger as I frantically twisted, firing the shotgun once and terminally injuring a defenseless poster on the subject of checking your nuts.
I hit the landing halfway down the stairs and rolled to absorb the impact, as I’d been trained.
That, of course, sent me bouncing down the second set of stairs, and the idiot above took off after me, as I screamed and swore.
I hit the wall at the bottom of the stairs. The world spun, and I forced myself to my feet, running straight ahead, trying to get to the nearest room and out of sight…
Only for my inner ear to inform me that left was actually straight ahead.
I crashed through the doors and into the main area of the guild, barely keeping my balance as my upgrades and training corrected my balance. Then I went ass over tit, tripping over one of the dead gangers.
I landed, rolled, and came to a stop under a table, which, when I tried to stand…ably that it was made of metal, and was bolted to the floor.
I barely got my shotgun poked out from the legs in time to take the first of the running figures in the face. The bolo round opened out to spin end over end.
It impacted in the lower right of his jaw, and practically decapitated the top half of his head. Blood sprayed up the walls as his body went from running with a purpose to sliding across the floor, pumping blood everywhere.
Others were right behind him, and I fired again and again. The dozen or so figures ran this way and that while firing back at me.
Bullets hit the table, the floor, and my armor. The automatic stiffening of it deflected the impact, but weakened the overall integrity each time.
I rolled, or tried to, hitting the leg on either side, before I got a message. A second later, a voice called out and silence fell.
“That’s it, dickhead!” the voice said, and I recognized it as belonging to the fucker who’d not only stolen my handgun but had pissed on me. “Turrets are all activated. They’re holding fire, waiting on my command, but there’s no way you walk out of here.”
“Wanna bet?” I grinned inside my helm. “I’ve done it before—I’ll do it again!”
“Who the fuck are you?” he called back after a second. “Get out, leave your gun down there, and take that fucking helmet off!”
“You don’t remember, eh?” I slowly dragged myself out from under the table, laying the shotgun on the top. I winced, rolling my shoulder. A round had hit there right atop another, and although the armor had held, it was gonna leave a hell of a bruise.
“Helmet!” the pisser screamed. “Take it off!”
“All right,” I agreed, reaching up to my helmet as I accessed the new options that unfurled before me, mentally designating and approving as I went. “Look, I’m a generous guy,” I lied. “I’m going to give you a chance to transfer any and all your creds to me right now. You do that, you leave your guns where they are, and maybe I’ll let you live.”
“Get fucked,” the woman with the grazer rifle, a much smaller version than Reign’s, but still nice, said with a vicious curl of the lip.
“Well, you can’t say I didn’t give you a chance,” I said philosophically, before tossing my helmet aside, and smiling at them all. “Bang, bang, motherfuckers.” I made finger-guns and pointed at the figures that half ringed the room.
There was a half second of frozen disbelief, and then the turrets, all eight of them, opened fire.