Chapter Three

The rest of the day was a blur of crappy jobs, of cursing when something ran out from under equipment we were moving—sometimes spiders, sometimes rats, sometimes who knew—and finally of me cursing the name Oshbob to the fucking high heavens.

Dondo apparently did know a company that would collect all the crap and get rid of it, for a fee. When Gessh had told me how much later on—three hundred fucking creds—I’d almost told her to fuck right off.

All this shit could be smelted or recycled, so whoever took it all to the relevant places would be getting paid for the privilege.

Hell, we could leave it all out in the open and the street rats—the various millions of feral kids and gobbos that lived on the streets and in gangs—would nick it all, given a bit of time.

The issue was that we didn’t want those fuckers hanging around and seeing if we were doing anything interesting, or possibly valuable that they could steal and sell. Also, we needed it done now, because we were all impatient fucks, and really?

Three hundred creds wasn’t that much, not when you had the creds anyway. It was only a week ago that I had less than two hundred creds to my name after all.

In the end we’d agreed, and he’d taken the creds, agreeing he’d get the company to clear it all away by dawn.

He was as good as his word in one respect, by dawn the entire lot was indeed gone.

The issue was that he’d apparently gone straight to Oshbob, who’d pocketed the creds, and had sent a load of ‘his’ goblins straight over to collect it all.

That fucking orc had managed to make us pay to rent his place, pay to have his people ‘smuggle’ my armor across the fucking street and he’d insisted that we had to clean the place up as part of the deal. Now we’d done that, and he’d charged us to take away the crap he’d fucking left in the warehouse!

I didn’t know if I hated the sneaky conniving bastard, or if I was starting to get impressed.

Either way though, we’d ended up working our fucking asses off all day, and Dondo apparently worked Gessh—and possibly Luna—hard for half the night as well.

By the time an unexpected alert went off I was sandy eyed, exhausted from almost no sleep, and I was grimly determined that sound deadening insulation was going to be one of the first major purchases I made for my room.

I was also seriously ready to fucking shoot someone, so the alert was almost welcome, even coming as it was before 0400.

I dragged my clothes on, and then my armor, before striding out into our ‘kitchen’ and grabbing guns from the locker we’d had installed there.

Fuck food, we could order pizza and whatever else in we needed, but a damn good gun safe was a necessity.

“What is it?” Luna asked, stumbling out of Gessh’s room, yawning and struggling into her pants, as Dondo continued to snore on the bed behind her.

“Fucking timing!” Gessh growled. Following her out, bleary eyed and pulling her clothes on as well. “I literally just got to sleep!”

“We know,” Reign said. “Believe me, we fucking know.” She grabbed a box of ammo and started reloading her sub machineguns as quickly as possible. “Fucking should have done this earlier…”

“Get dressed,” I ordered the girls. “Boot him out, and get your gear, it’s an all-hands alert, something just went shit for the guild and we’re on standby.”

“Standby for what?” Luna asked, yawning hugely.

“Weekly rotation,” Reign explained, sighing. “Fuck’s sake, didn’t you read the contract? Every team has a week, we’re team seventeen out of thirty-nine, so we won’t get called on again for a while, but as long as we’re in the guild, we have to respond to a call for aid.”

“How often does this shit happen?” Gessh called to us, hurrying into her room and grabbing some more clothes, before kicking her sleeping ‘friend’ in the foot. “Up and at 'em, sunshine. Time to fuck off.”

“Already?” he mumbled.

“Yeah, we’ve got a job and you can’t stay here.”

“Okay…” he groused, starting to search for clothes as Reign replied to Gessh, and I saw far more of the big fucker than I wanted to.

“Not very often, and we get double pay when it does, bonuses are well worth it, but… holy fucking shit, is that real?” Reign continued.

“His nickname’s Tripod.” Luna grinned. “Now you know why.”

“Should be fucking horse, damn!”

“I’ll be walking funny for a while,” Luna admitted.

“LALALLALALLA!” I called as I covered my ears, much to their laughter, as Reign patted me on the shoulder.

“There, there, Kabutt,” she said making a fake sad face. “It’s okay, you’re only human…”

“Fuck right off all of you,” I said grimly. “Reign, sort the transport. I’ll get details.”

“Yes boss,” she said nodding, the joking atmosphere dropping as I issued orders. “Gessh, check the charger once you’re dressed. Luna, grab your gear and two boxes of ammo, we can cross load on the way…”

I pulled up the job details as I was speaking, reading quickly and wincing at the distance, it was across the fucking city, right up against the eastern wall, and I knew what that meant. Even as I started to read the details.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

Job: Alert! Emergency Response!

Team-17 as the emergency responders for week 35 are required to assist Team-22 at location [location included].

Beware! This location has been identified as a probable outbreak area —

Team-22 have activated emergency beacons and are awaiting rescue due to overwhelming Specter influxes driven by unknown third party.

Bounties confirmed:

 3x [GHOUL] have been tracked on site, not verified as Terminated

 1x [Unknown variant] not verified as Terminated

 100x [Standard Specter] not verified as Terminated

Supplemental:

‘We’re fucking low on ammo so bring any rifle and pistol you’ve got and fucking hurry!’

—Badger, Team Lead, Team-22

Accept Job?

I accepted it, getting a green light from Julius as well, a ‘I see you’re going, so thanks’ type of thing.

It took a few minutes, that was all, but this time, in addition to my rifle, my revolver, two medikits—one small, one medium—and grenades—one flashbang, one EMP and two incendiaries—I also had my looted plasma sword.

It was recharged, good for about an hour of solid use, and as I attached it to my back, Gessh called up from below.

“Grazer’s charged!” she shouted joyfully, and I sighed.

“I told you it was worth buying.” Reign leant in close, her lips almost touching my ear as she whispered in it.

The shiver that ran down my back at the closeness of her lips reminded me just how goddamn badly I needed to help her pay off that debt.

A minute later and Dondo was walking sleepily out of the front gate, as a high speed cab touched down inside the now cleared area at the front.

We piled in, two boxes of rifle and pistol ammo dumped on the floor between us as we loaded any and every empty magazine we had.

Fifteen minutes later—and eight goddamn hundred credits for the emergency flight, eight fucking hundred for a cab—and we were touching down by the eastern wall, the doors of the cab lifting smoothly as we dragged ourselves out as fast as we could.

It was time to get our game faces on.

The area we’d landed in was a shithole normally. Hell, in general rules, if the center of the city was where ninety-nine percent of the creds were spent and generated, and the further out from that point you went, the less of each?

We were literally up against the edge of the outer wall.

The only reason this area wouldn’t be called a slum, was that slum dwellers would be fucking furious at the comparison.

The wall that surrounded Artem was massive, insanely thick and over engineered, with everything from gamma cannons to spikes dotted here there and everywhere on the outside of it to discourage visitors.

Despite all of that, and the fucking size of the thing—it towered over us, blocking out the light—somehow monsters, scavs, nomads, slavers and who the fuck knew what else, made it inside on an almost daily basis.

It didn’t help that the wall was over seven hundred years old.

It also didn’t help that it was constantly being rebuilt, repaired and fucking reworked by the lowest bidder, and that the absolute minimum was spent that could be spent.

That meant that while the wall might not be breached in your area today, if you lived or worked next to the wall, it would be breached eventually, and when it was? Sometimes it took days for anyone outside the local area to notice, or even fucking care.

Because of that while people complained about living literally cheek by jowl in the arcologies, they’d rather live there than anywhere near the wall.

Entire sections of the poorest and most fucked up people in society lived there, pushed out as far as they could be by lack of money, by growing degradation of their implants, or a million other things.

When we scrambled free of the cab and looked around, I couldn’t help but curse.

The wall that towered over us here was riddled with rust, and I could see fresh blood and bullet casings strewn about in the mud of the abandoned parking lot. That there were no bodies, and the distant, echoing gunfire from somewhere below was sporadic and panicked?

This was not going to be a good one.

“Team-22!” I sent to the lead of the other group. “Team-17 here, just landed and incoming with ammo and reinforcements… status?”

Silence was the only response, and I knew this was going to be bad.

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