We’d just started off, when Reign spun, dropping low and lifting her rifle, zeroing in on the derelict cooling tower the specters had been trying to get at, and from which she’d apparently heard a noise.
“Inside,” she snapped, and I nodded, speaking quickly.
“Okay, people, spread out.” I expected that we had either a specter stuck inside or some kind of vermin or something. “Luna, you see something?” I asked, as she started to move, then stepped back, squatting down.
“Liquid…” she said slowly. “Leaking from under a manifold.”
“Liquid?”
“Piss,” she corrected, sniffing, then sighing. “If it’s strong enough I can smell it over all this shit in the air, there’s only one fucking species it can be.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake!” Reign growled. “They’d be how the specters got in! Fucking hell, that’s all we need—a bloody infestation in the bowels of the building…”
“What?” I asked, seeing the others all grimacing or sighing.
“Goblins,” Reign clarified. “Shit, you’re really still stuck in ‘soldier boy’ mode, aren’t you?”
“Ah, crap,” I muttered, nodding. “Sorry. Of course, goblins!”
Goblins were regarded, depending on who was speaking, as anything from vermin that were slightly less welcome than ex-partners with a sexual disease to occasionally, if you were feeling generous, a highly unfortunate sapient species.
They were the most adaptogenic of the species living in the city, had both an extremely fast genetic adjustment period and were ferocious breeders. These traits meant that goblins, although rarely seen, were literally fucking everywhere.
They weren’t the brightest, and although their bodies adapted to allow them to survive almost anywhere, their brains weren’t in the same category. That was the only reason they weren’t running the world right now.
Their minds moved more to cunning and manipulation, or insane weaponry and creations, rather than developing as a race, and there were as many theories about why as there were raindrops.
Most of the goblins in the city were baseline gobbos: short, around three feet tall, living on rats and other vermin, attempting to break into anywhere they could and steal anything not nailed down.
Shopkeepers had learned to their detriment that if you dealt with gobbos, it cost you. Buy stolen goods? Expect them to be casing your defenses as they sell you their loot.
Attack them? They’ll target you, piss in your window, and rub shit on your walls all the way around, and you could expect mail with squishy additions at any time of the day or night.
No, the only way to deal with gobbos was acknowledged to be to make them someone else’s problem. Leaving some meat outside a rival shop’s garbage disposal or random bits of tech worked wonders, as did ignoring them—close up, seal the shop, have a long day off if they turn up.
You might as well; nobody was entering a shop with gobbos around it, and if you stayed open? They’d rob you blind.
No, best to close up and let them get bored and move on.
The other option, of course, was extermination.
Entire guilds were dedicated to goblin “issues,” offering anything from “protection” packages to outright slaughtering the little bastards. The fun thing was, most of the top guilds offering this?
Run by half-breed goblins.
Higher and more intelligent versions, true, but there were a hell of a lot of different variants, and most of the half-goblin breeds weren’t accepted the way the rest of the city was with the other races.
I’d dealt with them a lot growing up in the city, mainly placing bets on the various internecine conflicts as they sprang up, or hiring random gobbos to do “jobs” for me.
Things like sending them to deliver “gifts” to an ex, that kinda thing.
I’d viewed them as slightly brighter rodents, and that was it. I’d grown up in a military family, so they weren’t really an issue for me. They tended not to fuck with the forces, because they got exterminated quickly when they did.
They were “experience” for green troops, after all.
Now, though? Now I was remembering the other side of dealing with the goblins, and fuck.
They tended to view it as anything they could grab was theirs by rights of conquest. And finding their way into here? The bottom of a literal bio-food factory?
This wouldn’t be cheap to sort out…or it wouldn’t if…
“How many?” I asked.
“Not sure,” Luna admitted, before moving over and kicking the side of the tower. “Oi, you little shits! Get out!”
There was silence for a few seconds before the response came.
“We’s not here!” a voice called out, and I facepalmed at the stupidity.
“Who’s not there?” Luna asked.
“Us.”
“Who’s us?” she asked again, looking over at me and grinning.
“We grew up with gobbos in the block,” Gessh whispered to me. “Give her a minute.”
“We’s us.”
“No you’re not.”
“Yes we is!”
“No, you’re not there. You already said.”
“We is here!”
“I don’t believe you!”
“We here!”
“Liar!”
“Me no liar!” A scuffle broke out and ten seconds later, five battered, filthy, and glowering goblins stood before us. One wore a hat that was…yeah, it was wearing a porta-potty seat as a hat.
It even had the image of a toddler shitting on it, albeit upside down at the minute.
“We’s us!” the toilet seat-wearing idiot proudly proclaimed.
“No,” Luna said flatly. “You said you weren’t there, now you say you are. You’re liars!”
“Me NEVER lie!” he growled, straightening up and glowering at us, while fingering a shitty hatchet with a cracked edge.
“Prove it.”
“How?”
“How’d you get in here?”
“Tunnel,” he declared happily. “Tunnel not locked.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“We shows you! You have to ’pologise then!”
“Maybe.” Luna stifled a smile as the little leader stormed off, the remains of his clan following him.
We followed as well, stepping over bodies as we went, passing the occasional specter, apparently gnawed, clawed, or stabbed to death, and dead goblins, literally dozens of them for each of the specters.
Ten minutes later, we found the tunnel entrance, propped open and with a veritable mound of the dead beyond it.
Seemingly, as Luna found out by questioning the gobbos, the noises that the bio-farm staff had been hearing filtering up and the weird sightings had been the gobbos and specters fighting it out.
Normally gobbos wouldn’t bother the specters, as they had nothing worth stealing to make it worth the almost certain slaughter they’d get. And the specters didn’t bother the gobbos, as they rarely had the mods that the specters wanted.
The only goblins that tended to have mods were the half-breeds, most often the dvar.
Dvar were much rarer than the other species, mainly because to breed a dvar, you needed a goblin and a dwarf to get it on—and dwarves were notoriously insular, or at least they were until recently. Unlike humans, of course, who demonstrably would fuck anything that moved. And if it didn’t? It got fucked twice.
The dvar were insanely rare outside of dwarven territory, and, according to urban legend, only existed due to a particularly drunk dwarf one night who was so far gone in his cups, he didn’t realize that not only had his wife left him—for having a shitty beard, so the story went—but that when he climbed into bed and tried “prodding her with it, to get her in the mood” failed to notice she was much smaller, greener, and apparently more willing than normal.
The next morning, he’d sobered up and been furious, kicking the goblin out. But in true hungover, morning-after-the-one-night-stand style, he decided that he might as well have one last go first.
The goblin was perfectly willing, totally ignoring him essentially as she ate everything on the table and he entertained himself.
Once the deed was done, she’d been evicted, and when he’d sobered up, he’d been furious and disgusted with himself.
After a hard week at work, though, and a lot to drink, the dwarf had “accidentally” left the window to his apartment open again, and sure enough, she “snuck” in.
That went on for weeks and then months, until suddenly, much to his horror, she presented him with a bouncing baby boy, the first dvar.
She’d buggered off, having found something shiny elsewhere, and he was left to raise the child. He kept it hidden, often leaving it to play with some of the simple machinery toys he’d learned with as a child.
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When he returned home from work one day and actually paid attention, he’d been astounded to find the machinery correctly assembled.
He tried his son on a more complex issue, then another and another.
By the time the dvar child was ten, he had a grasp of mechanics and engineering that was so advanced that his father was forced to take him to the dwarven council and admit to the whole sordid story.
At first, they were disgusted, then intrigued. Ten more dwarves were picked out and ordered to breed with the goblins.
Six refused outright. Four agreed, with caveats and impressive advance payments. After the first four shared their first night’s experiences with the other six—including that not only did the women in question not have beards but that they were exceedingly willing, rather than basically glaring at them and offering unhelpful comparisons and comments as encouragement—well, they promptly changed their minds and gave it a go as well.
The next generation of dvar grew up to be a problem. Naturally adaptive and engineering wonders, they were recognized as a potential threat to the dwarven race, as they could supplant them and literally breed them out of existence.
The dwarves solved the problem in their own, inimitable way. They declared goblins fair game, but only one per clan could breed with them, and by lottery only.
This eventually evolved, according to legend, into a game of bingo, and the dwarven taverns soon rang with the calls of “two fat ladies, eighty-eight” and so on, as dwarven clan leaders frantically dabbed out the numbers on their bingo cards.
The winner would be proclaimed with a great cheer, before the rest of the tavern would finally get drunk, drowning their sorrows over the lucky dwarf who was being mobbed by goblin ladies.
The dwarves, of course, denied this myth totally.
All of this went through my mind as I stared at the goblins before me, and a sneaking suspicion grew. It only took a minute to check the goblins over. It was blatantly obvious that none of them had anything that the specters would be interested in, until I focused on the abnormally large “hat” their leader wore.
“Your hat,” I said slowly, as Luna and the goblin argued over whether he was a liar or not, and he tried to deny having ever met her before right this very second, in the tunnels outside of “his” factory.
“Family hat,” he said. “Very old. Very important.”
“Can I see it?” I asked.
“It invisible? You no see it?” he asked me, confused. “Me invisible?”
“No, I can see you, and the hat,” I clarified. “Can I have a closer look at it?”
“What you got?” He smiled, looking me up and down. “Trade?”
“For a hat?” I asked him, reaching into a pocket and pulling out a dead credit-chip. “Depends. I’d need to look at the hat first.”
“How much on this?”
“Lots,” I assured him, and he nodded, slipping it into a pocket. “So?”
“So what?”
“So give me the damn hat!” I growled.
“No.” He grinned. “You say closer look. You look.” He leaned forward, angling it so I could see it clearer, but still leaving me utterly unable to tell whether there was anything inside.
“Listen here, you little shit!” I growled. “We just saved your fucking life from those specters! We spent all that ammo to save you and…”
“You save goblin?” he asked slowly, his smile widening as Luna frantically shook her head to me in warning.
“No…” I said slowly, confused.
“You liar!”
“No I’m not!” I growled, before shaking my head, realizing I was arguing with a goblin, that I’d just lied to, about whether I was a liar or not. “Ah, fuck it,” I growled, shifting my rifle across my chest, and reaching for my handgun, about to “solve” the goblin issue permanently.
“Kabutt…” Reign said slowly, and I glanced at her, only to have her tap her eye again warningly.
“Fuck,” I growled. “It was only a thought.”
“I know,” she agreed. “And I understand it, but obviously you wouldn’t have been actually thinking of executing a sentient being here for annoying you, right?”
“No,” I assured her from between gritted teeth. “Certainly not.”
“Glad to hear it. Of course, should the owners of this property demand we do something, that would be different, as we’d be paid exterminators with a formal contract.”
I couldn’t help but grin, and then, taking the pretty unsubtle hint, I replied, “Reign, make the contract owners aware of the goblins in the basement, and that they and specters are down here. In fact…might want to mention that we’ve found…” I paused, quickly counting the overall numbers of specters and goblins—not the living numbers, just the overall. “At least twenty goblins and about fifty specters, with probably more in the tunnels outside.”
“Will do.” She released her rifle and casually fist-bumped me as she put the call through.
“What you do?” The goblin looked from one of us to the other.
“Nothing,” I assured him. “She’s talking to the person who owns this place, and who paid us to come here to kill the specters…”
“Me did it.”
“What?”
“Me paid you,” he declared, smiling grandly. “Me own this.”
“You own it?”
“Me do.”
“Then you owe us…ten thousand credits,” I declared, picking the number at random.
“What!” He screeched. “No!”
“Each.”
“Me no pay!”
“You see all of these?” I gestured to the specters. “We killed them. We need to be paid.”
“Me no pay.”
“Well, if that’s how it’s going to be…”
“Kabutt?” Reign called, and I nodded to her, looking away from the goblin for a minute, only to see a sudden sharp movement as he lunged in close.
I twisted, blocking on instinct. Long years of wearing armored suits came to the fore as I blocked the hatchet with my left forearm. Sparks flared to life from the metal on metal before I punched the little shit in the face with the right.
It staggered back, and the others lunged to attack my squad. Luna and Gessh, well versed in dealing with gobbos and their innate treachery, were already flicking blood off their blades. Hobbs had apparently punted his so hard in the crotch that even if it lived, it’d certainly never walk straight again, and Reign didn’t bother with a bullet, flipping her rifle around and slamming it butt-first into the nearest one’s head with a crunch.
That left only mine staggering, hands pressed to his face, as he snarled at me. Pulling them down, his long ears quivering in outrage and pointed nose blatantly broken, he screamed at me and leapt forward, hatchet swinging wildly.
I dragged the pistol out and shot him once in the chest. His little toast-rack of a rib cage barely slowed the bullet, before he collapsed, dead.
“Wait!” Reign called out as Luna went to behead Hobbs’s opponent—who was clutching his family jewels and making sounds that only small dogs could hear—and we all looked to her.
“Accept the update…” she said to me, shooting the contract over.
I read it, seeing the amendment that had been added. It was outlined in red against the original version I’d seen, thanks to my RI.
I skimmed it, then nodded, approving it and grinning. An additional twenty credits would be added to the bill, per goblin killed.
As soon as I signed it, and approved, Reign nodded to Luna, who ended the little goblin’s misery.
“Saw the way you marked it.” I nodded to Reign in respect, and she grinned, before explaining for the others’ benefit.
“Well, as you said, there were more than twenty goblins down here, so I got it phrased so we’re paid for each goblin marked as dead.”
I saw the understanding spreading. Sure, we might have killed five, but that didn’t mean we were only getting paid for that.
Every single body dragged in, we’d get paid for.
We set about quickly, looting each one, and although there was little more to add to the pile, I thought I recognized the botched-together bit of kit I found, unsurprisingly, hidden in the leader’s “hat.”
I was also stunned that it was here, and seriously curious how a fucking goblin, of all creatures, had managed to get its filthy claws on it.
“What’s that?” Reign asked.
I grinned as I checked it over.
“It’s a bonus if I can get it working.” I pointed to the damage that was clear for all to see. “It looks a bit like some of the tech I used to have to carry in the APS Corps. Might be able to fix it yet, but—”
“More specters, boss!” Hobbs called around the edge of the door, and I grunted, quickly dumping it into my bag, rather than the general one.
“Okay, people, game faces back on!” I ordered, stepping up and through the door, squinting down the tunnel that ran left and right from the entrance. “What are we dealing with, Reign?”
“We’ve got to get this door sealed to confirm the contract completed, but even if we could with them out here, they’re determined to get inside. We need to wipe them all out.”
“We’ve got more bodies out here to loot anyway!” Gessh added, making me grin.
I liked dealing with half-orcs. I sort of liked dealing with orcs as well. They were good soldiers, or they were once they survived long enough for the army to see past their species.
At first? They were generally used as cannon fodder. Sent out to catch a bullet so it didn’t end up in someone the army had already spent money on training.
Half-orcs, though? People viewed them as they did the other half-breeds that made up a serious percentage of the city’s population, as just another person, rather than the way that people crossed the street when an orc dared to walk down the sidewalk in the posher areas.
It was probably down to the way that just as in humans, a blonde and a brunette parent might have blonde, brunette, or redheaded kids, but you never knew. And some might have almost none of the parents’ visible traits, and others would be carbon copies.
Well, half-breeds were the same. Half-orcs varied from just slightly denser muscles and bigger teeth, to looking like full-on orcs almost. Where people could pass as simply generic half-breeds? They did.
Half-orc mercs, though? Damn, they were good. As intelligent as any other, but stronger, faster, and when the shit hit the fan, they stood their ground. They also liked loot and partying as much as any other soldier I’d ever served with.
It was like being home.
The tunnel we’d stepped out into was one of the old mass transit ones from under the city—not a physical transport one, like the ones that carried trains and more. This was one of the additional foot traffic ones, running alongside and under the trains, letting people travel to work from the stations, without ever having to set foot above ground.
I’d heard that harked back to the days of the nukes and the wild nanite plagues, but who knew really.
It meant, though, that the entire undercity was riddled with tunnels, and although the city above had tried to close them all off, sealing sections as more and more goblins, specters, and undesirables were driven deeper, the tunnels were gradually opened by them as the new inhabitants took over new sections, fought hidden wars, and then vanished again.
These tunnels had been moved into at some point. Wooden barriers had been set up, forming hidden shacks, and then they’d been smashed down. Old blood stains covered the walls, and at least a dozen specter and goblin bodies were scattered around out here. Most of them had been hacked apart, making it clear that the goblins hadn’t been happy to be driven back.
They were vicious little fuckers, and wherever they’d gotten their little artifact from, I didn’t know, but the specters seriously wanted it back.
The route to the right was empty and silent, but at least a dozen of them staggered forward. The glowing red and blue of backlit optics made the tunnel look even weirder with my vision enhancements.
“Okay, people!” I called out. “Let’s get some room first. Shoulder to shoulder, free fire—take them all down.”
It only took a few seconds, maybe half a minute of careful fire, and they were dropped. In the distance, though, I could see more coming already, slowly appearing at the very limit of my range.
“Is that it?” Hobbs asked.
“Nope,” Reign replied before I could. “Ten more I can see…nine.”
She finished her words with a gunshot, and then another a few seconds later: “Eight.”
“Reign, keep taking them down. I’ll keep an eye on our rear. Luna, Geesh…loot the corpses. Hobbs, check that goddamn door. We need to seal it,” I ordered.
They moved fast, the occasional curses rising as the girls searched the bodies, before Hobbs called over from the door.
“Boss, we’ve got a problem.”
“What’s that?”
“Goblins fucked the locking mechanism. No way we can seal this.”
“What’d they do to it?” Luna asked in disbelief.
“Looks like a jury-rigged plasma torch. Literally carved the lock apart. The door won’t stay closed, no way.”
“Shit.” I cursed. “Okay, so can we brace it? Or—”
“More coming!” Reign called, and I twisted around, moving to stand next to her, squinting.
“Too far,” I said in a low voice. “I can’t see anything.”
“They’re hanging back.” She cursed. “Nothing behind us?”
“Nothing I can see. Take a minute and jog that way—you’ll see farther than me. I’ll shout if they reach my range here,” I ordered after a second. “Luna, Geesh, with me.” They moved in closer, and I spoke quickly. “The goblins had something that drew the specters, and—”
“That thing you grabbed?” Luna asked, and I paused, looking at her. My helm must have been intimidating in the dark, as she held one hand up in apology.
“I don’t know. It could be, if it’s what I think it is, but I don’t know how they got one, and it’s damaged.”
“What is it?” Hobbs called, and I ignored him.
“So, we need to hold this line until Hobbs can fix—”
“I can’t fix it,” he said. “Not without some tools at the very least, and one of them better be an arc welder. That door is fucked.”
“Okay, we’ve got specters gathering at either end of the tunnel.” Reign jogged back to us. “What’s the plan, boss?” She grinned nervously.
“What happens if we can’t seal the tunnel?” I asked her instead.
“If we leave?”
“No, I mean if we just can’t seal it. The door’s too damaged. They didn’t send us with construction gear…”
“Ah.” She hesitated, clearly giving me a chance to figure out a solution, before she had to mark me down for it.
I realized this was something that had to happen fairly regularly, so therefore…
“Reign, contact the client, request a team to seal the door?” I asked, and she grinned, nodding, as I let out a breath of relief.
Taking my question as an order, she got to work while I turned to the others.
“Okay, the doorway is our retreat point. If the shit hits the fan? We get inside. We’re not losing people for the sake of the contract. That being said, we need to sort this clusterfuck out. If there’s specters gathering, rather than just rushing us, we’ve got a ghoul at least somewhere. We hold the line here, kill the fuckers, and once they start shooting at us? We all focus fire on that fuck.”
“Take him down, and the rest will revert,” Hobbs agreed. “Ranged?”
“As much as we can,” I said. “We take down all those we can at range. If they get in too close, melee if we have to. I’ll switch to shotgun if they get in close. I’ve got a few ‘fun’ rounds loaded, so make sure you’re not between me and them when I pull it.”
“Oh gods…” Luna breathed, before grinning. “Well, at least there’s gonna be plenty of loot, and if we’re claiming for all the specters and all the gobbos?”
“Yeah.” I grinned, even if they couldn’t see it. “Payday.”