“Did you really take all his guns and modules?” A tired-sounding Stick-Point asked Trace over a call.

He was sitting at one of the tables, taking apart all the tech that would be shoved into the 3D printer later. Most of it was too large to fit in the intake module in their current forms, so they needed to be made smaller. That was only part of the reason behind what he was doing, as a small collection of parts and useful components had begun to build up in a box to the side.

At the moment, he had no idea what he was going to do with all of them, especially if he wasn’t going to be actively fixing things anymore. However, he figured it wasn’t a bad thing to collect them, since he knew they were useful. Eventually, he would find something to do with them, even if it did take a while. In the meantime, they could stay in separate sealed containers on the shelves out in the warehouse.

“Why do people keep asking me that?” Trace wondered aloud. Sevorah had asked him that as well before he left the clinic. “Of course, I took them all. He wasn’t going to use them, even if he did make it back to the apartment. I’ll return the teaching modules as I’m done with them.”

Stick-Point chuckled and muttered something that Trace didn’t catch. “He wants to be a job broker, said you suggested him for the position. That true?”

“Sort of. I was originally angling him for more of a master planner position, for teams that needed help on large jobs. He seems to have a gift for that sort of thing, but he took it another way.” Trace wicked the last of the solder away from the joint and lifted the connector free from the board. “Why? Are the others actually thinking about letting him join?”

Becoming a job broker wasn’t as easy as just picking a spot in the city and calling that your territory. In the past, it might have been like that, but those days were long past. Nowadays, the job brokers had rules, there was a council. It kept things organized and from getting out of hand.

They had tiers similar to the edgers, that allowed for multiple job brokers to work inside the same territory. There were dozens of them spread throughout the city, though Trace had only ever dealt with a small handful of them. Which was by design, you worked with those you knew and built up trust. They were the ones who would sort through the extra-shady jobs before they ever reached your eyes.

In Trace’s case he had recently taken jobs that had caused his trust in Jonas the Slick, Stick-Point, and even to a lesser degree Revlock to suffer. It was at least partially why the man had stuck around during the last job. He had wanted to ensure that nothing went wrong.

“They’re undecided at this point, but the odds are good that they will let him take over Jonas’s place.”

“Huh, well, it’ll be good for him, I guess. Speaking of, I need a few two-man jobs. Flash-Fry and I are thinking of working together on a job that will take some time. So, we need something that will put us together and show how the other operates.”

“I didn’t realize he was ready to finally start taking the work seriously. What changed?”

“The corpos are jacking up prices on everything, trying to squeeze out independent contractors. He can’t afford to keep his day job.” He replied simply.

“I always knew he was crazy. That’s fine, though, I have a few jobs that I couldn’t send you before due to difficulty. With a partner like him at your side, this gives me a few more options. I’ll let Revlock and the others know as well.”

Trace threw the last of the disassembled parts into the box by the door of the apartment and stood. It had been a fruitful discussion with Stick-Point, and true to his word, he had sent a new job his way right after they had hung up.

It was another job outside the walls, in the wastelands. They wouldn’t be visiting a scarpo town this time though. It was strictly sticking to the wastelands and the old ruins out there. Anyone exploring those ruins needed someone to watch their back. It was just good sense, and that was before the job came into play.

Stick-Point had received word that there was a drug operation being run out of one of the ruins. He didn’t know which one, or how many people they might encounter. As such, the job was mainly reconnoitering and learning everything they could about the location. Maybe quietly eliminate one or two people, if possible, but that was it.

They were then to send that information to Stick-Point from a safe location. He would then decide if they received a continuation to the job to destroy the operation, or if their part in the mission was done.

He wasn’t taking any chances of a repeat of Trace’s last job with him.

Before Trace could call up to Monroe, a rumble from the waterlogged basement shook the floor. Dust jumped into the air as Monroe poked his head through the hole he had been about to patch.

“What in the ever-loving shizzba was that?”

“I’m about to find out if you feel like joining me.” Trace ran into the apartment structure for his courier bag with the revolver and an assault rifle with a bright flashlight attached to it.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

He waited for Monroe to grab his own weapons of choice along with a light and led him over to the corner with the elevator. In all the times that the big man had been inside the warehouse, he had never even realized there was a loading elevator there. Granted, the overall dimness inside the place had something to do with that, but it was rather well disguised.

Trace hit the button and lowered the floor several feet until there was a gap where they could look down into the basement below. Stopping the elevator there, they both got on their bellies and turned on their flashlights.

The waterline, which had continued to go down thanks to the pumps running all the time, was now gushing out of a large hole in the wall. The wall which had possessed a crack previously was several feet thick. From what Trace could now see, it had contained a -clogged- drainage pipe that pointed down at an angle into the sewer runoff. The same ones he was actively draining the water through using pipes in the upper warehouse section.

“It looks like you have a new escape route,” Monroe quipped, the beam of his light lingering on the new hole for a few moments.

“Great, lucky me. It’ll be easy to get out of, but impossible to get back in again, not to mention everything else that can climb up the hole can now enter my basement.” Trace complained. His own flashlight was sweeping the basement, but the roiling water made it impossible to spot anything. It was all trying to escape from the newly created hole, disrupting what had once been calm, inky-black waters.

“What do you think could have created that hole? Denver doesn’t have rumors about crocodiles in the sewers that I know of.”

Trace groaned and dialed Revlock. “Do you know if they ever caught that, uh, special bear we were tracking the other day?” He asked with a side glance at Monroe.

“I haven’t heard anything one way or the other. Why? I thought I told you to forget about it all.”

“And that’s exactly what I was doing… Until something broke into the basement of my warehouse just now that just so happened to come from the sewers.”

Revlock cursed. “Whatever you do, don’t give the corpo agents a reason to attack you!”

“Corpo agents? What corpo agents? There aren’t any-” Monroe’s hand slammed Trace’s head into the floor of the concrete elevator just as someone opened fire on them from down below. “Never mind, they just arrived.” He finished thickly, his mouth filling with blood. Monroe hadn’t had time to be gentle and Trace’s gums and lips had suffered as a result. He hung up as more bullets whizzed by just above their heads.

“What do we do?” Monroe asked, laying down flat, as he slowly inched away from the edge of the platform.

“Well, I can’t stand to reach the controls with them firing at us,” Trace followed the man’s example and inched away from danger as well. “We can either wait them out or fire back. The problem with waiting them out is if they decide to actually eliminate us. This isn’t the only way down to the basement.”

Monroe groaned. “Is there a way for us to even fire back at them without getting hit?”

Trace nodded and pulled out his K-10. “This gun has a fun little scope mod on it. It links up to my eyes properly instead of just giving me the normal targeting reticle. I can point and aim it over the edge with minimal danger to myself.” He might lose a hand or some fingers, but it was better than his life.

“Would you be able to help me aim as well?”

“Ugh, maybe? If you fired a few rounds so I knew where your gun was pointing, I would be able to tell you what to do, but it would be pretty wasteful and imprecise.” Trace told him doubtfully, wondering why he would even want to try something like that.

Monroe rolled over and unholstered two guns. The first was a fairly standard Lexoya 10mm, while the second was a behemoth of a revolver that was even larger than Trace’s Colter 700. This was also a Colter 700, but it wasn’t a Special 4, but the even larger Special 6.

“I know this is completely the wrong time to ask this, but do you have a supply of ammunition on that thing? Or do you reload yourself?” Trace asked in awe as he slipped his courier bag around to the front and partially pulled out his own revolver. “None of the shops I’ve been to have anything for it, and none of the reloading units I have seen can even handle the cartridges.”

Monroe let out a low whistle as he looked at Trace with new appreciative eyes. “Can you actually fire that thing without breaking your wrist?” He nodded. “Huh, maybe pairing up with you is a good thing, after all. I mostly reload, but I know a couple of people who make custom ammo as well. It’s expensive, but well, there’s no other choice when it comes to this baby.”

“Can you introduce them to me at some point?”

“Sure, assuming we survive this.”

Trace took the hint, zipped back up the bag, and refocused. “Okay, so I’m assuming you’re going to use the Lexoya for targeting and then blast them away with the 700?”

“That’s the basic idea, yeah.”

“Alright, well, let’s see how stupid of an idea this really is.”

They both crawled back over to the edge and tipped their barrels over into the darkness. Monroe kept both of his as close together as possible to prevent any extra deviation from occurring. Trace, for his part, simply did what he could to match the man’s movements.

It was a mess, an absolutely jerky, annoying mess. Despite that, they slowly found a measure of success. It wasn’t large, but it was enough to keep the corpo agents below at least partially distracted. Which worked in their favor.

They were fighting against the rushing water, the bullets from above, the occasional chunk of tossed concrete from within the basement by the bear, and the bear itself whenever one actually got far enough inside.

The squad of agents was finding themselves in more trouble than they had initially counted on when they came to this location.

The bullets in Monroe’s ridiculously oversized revolver punted them back into the sewer whenever they hit them dead on. The heavy ammo didn’t appear to be going through their armor, though Trace had no doubt they were still feeling the punishing blows. Whenever the rounds would hit something a little less protected, well, limbs had a habit of partially disintegrating.

“We are going to be in so much trouble if any of them survive this little encounter,” Monroe grunted, as he slapped a quick loader into the back of his open revolver.

“Tell me something I don’t already know!” Trace snarled, his wrist aching from the abuse of firing the pistol at such an odd angle. “They attacked us first, anyway. It’s my fracking basement!”

Above them, the doors to the warehouse itself shuddered as something heavy ran into them.

The two shared a glance and cursed as Trace leaped to his feet and hit the button to raise the platform.