Novels2Search

Chapter 72

Monroe stopped the van well short of the waiting vehicles, while Trace looked around for any others waiting in the hills or trees. The scout rifle was held lightly in his left hand, while the loaded revolver was gripped in his new hand.

Catching movement in the mirrors, they saw a lifted car burst out of the trees and bounce onto the road with a distinct fishtail. It slid to a stop a dozen or so feet behind the van.

“Well, that is a little more annoying,” Monroe rumbled, grabbing his oversized assault rifle. His revolver was already holstered to his thigh in place of his smaller pistol. He had figured they would need the heavier firepower of the Colter 700 if they ran into raiders while on the road. The smaller pistol he used for edger work just wouldn’t cut it when he was trying to take out a likely armored vehicle.

“I’ll handle the people at our back if you take out the idiots in front of us with that behemoth.” Trace volunteered, eyeing the man’s rifle.

“Let’s see how they react first, but we’ll plan on that being the split.” He agreed.

Trace tentatively opened his door and leaned out, making sure to remain behind it. The window, while not bulletproof, was reinforced, and the heavy metal of the door certainly was bulletproof.

“Can we help you with something?” He yelled out, trying to keep an eye on everyone at the same time.

“Yeah, actually you can. We’re going to need your van,” One of them yelled back in a weird accent.

“Sorry, but it’s not for sale.” Trace returned.

Monroe chuckled, the delight filling his deep bass laughter shaking the front of the van.

The raiders in front of them were all stupefied by the response. The people behind them, not so much. A dozen bullets splattered against the rear door, as a smg went to work.

“You want to change your answer now?” They heard someone yell from behind the van.

Monroe’s eyes grew hard at what had just been done to his precious van. No one shot at Black Betty and got away with it. He threw his door open and stepped out. His large boots hitting the cracked, dusty pavement with dual thumps as he stretched to his full imposing height. Even with the large tires and lift kit on the van, its roof was currently only two inches taller than his head.

Trace rolled his eyes and quickly ran to the back of the van. He couldn’t spend too much time taking care of the people in the back. Monroe would need someone to provide him with some cover before he found himself trying to breathe out of a new butthole or something weird like that.

Not even bothering to stop and think, he threw himself into view, with the revolver at the ready. His cyberware eyes aimed down the old-school iron sights, while for once his new arm stayed steady. He squeezed the trigger and took a single step back, already aiming for the next person. This one was closer to the car and looked as though he wanted to hide behind it. A wise choice, considering what he had just seen happen to a large section of his partner’s body. A quarter of which now resembled nothing more than a finely pulped blood smoothie. No need for a blender.

A second shot rang out, and suddenly there was a sprinkling of white powder as the man’s head was erased from his body. Who knew that skull fragments resembled sugar if they hit with enough force?

Trace coughed and bent over at his hips. It was true he could fire the revolver a lot easier now, but the force of each shot also seemed to travel through his arm straight to his chest. It was a thoroughly unpleasant experience, and probably also his fault for locking the elbow joint.

If he had simply used the arm in a more natural manner, it probably wouldn’t have happened. However, the recoil would have raised his arm and delayed his second shot by a few seconds.

He gagged again, and after a second, reached for the ladder rungs on the back of the van. Monroe sometimes used the roof to transport extra metal and needed a way to get up there. Climbing up there, he laid himself out with the scout rifle pointed at the raiders in front. His revolver resting on the roof next to him.

He could see and hear Monroe shooting at the raiders from a ditch, roughly halfway to them. There were splotches of blood all over the dirt leading up to where he had jumped off the road. It was clear that he had been hit and was injured. However, he couldn’t see how bad the injuries might be from his current vantage point.

Trace had been debating giving Monroe access to the G.H.O.S.T. System and had even broached the topic with Ko and Deckard. He had originally thought that they would be interested in the idea. Deckard because it would be expanding the user base of the item he helped create, and Ko because, obviously, Monroe wouldn’t be the only one. Sevorah would have been invited as well.

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He had been rather surprised when they had both shot down his inquiry with extreme prejudice.

Deckard had simply mentioned that after learning about the aberration, and what the corporations were trying to do, he was reevaluating certain things. He still believed the system could help humanity, but that additional safeguards would need to be placed inside it first. He would not allow its power to become corrupted by others. Not in the same way, that his mother had corrupted her own creation to create the aberrations.

As for Ko, her reason had been somewhat simpler, but in the end, it tied back to Deckard’s. Limiting the spread of the G.H.O.S.T. System. Sevorah was a mender, and while she wasn’t some idiot healer who believed in doing no harm, she would do what she could for her patients. That meant that if she had the system, and knew it had a healing function, she wouldn’t hesitate to give it to her patients. Granted, she would likely be circumspect in the beginning, but how long would that last for? Soon enough, she would be giving it to everyone.

All of this is to say that Trace would need to take care of Monroe the old-fashioned way. He had packed plenty of first-aid kits just in case and made sure they each were stuffed with PlugDocs and Blood-gels.

The large assault rifle boomed, blowing a fist-sized hole straight through the steel plating of a car door. The inside of the car exploded in a cloud of foam and cotton as the artillery-sized round tore straight through the driver and passenger seats.

Trace patted his scout rifle, whispering sweet nothings to the comparatively much weaker gun. After seeing it fire, for some reason, he felt as though he had just stepped into a group shower and immediately dropped the soap. It was… emasculating in the worst and most unspeakable way possible.

Up to that point, he had always thought the scout rifle was perfectly adequate. Now, he could hardly look at the thing without thinking about Monroe’s much larger, sturdier gun. He shook his head, wondering at the weird directions his thoughts kept taking him lately.

Sighting down the scope, he felt his finger twitching against his will. A phantom response as the nerves continued to integrate with the cyberarm. At least that is what he would like to call it, but even his regular hand had done that occasionally whenever he had gotten too tense.

Ignoring it, he looked for the raider, who seemed as though they were being the most annoying. His finger tapped the trigger, throwing his aim off some, but not enough to matter. The idiot still went down, only now with a hole where his nose had been instead of a shot to the chest.

A second, he shot in the chest a few seconds later, only to realize the raider was wearing body armor. With an annoyed click of his tongue, he switched to aiming for extremities. Hands, feet, arms if they looked unprotected, and, of course, the ever-useful headshot.

It was harder to consistently shoot people in the head, as they tended to protect those better, or rather hide them more often. Hands and feet, while smaller targets, were the pieces most often left out in the open.

A shot to the hand would usually cause someone to spin into visibility. While a bullet to the foot would send the person to their knees, and typically bring their head into view.

Ten minutes later, all of the raiders were dead, and Trace had jumped off the roof of the van and retrieved a first-aid kit for his moronic partner.

“I’m not sure if that was cool, or just plain stupid,” He told the man who was struggling to climb out of the ditch. “That’s too bad. You still have all of your face. A scar and some surgery might have made you better looking.”

Monroe groaned out a chuckle. “I’m plenty handsome. Unfortunately, I can’t prove it the normal way, since you grew up on the streets.”

“Huh?” Trace asked in confusion, opening the kit.

“Yo momma jokes? No, nothing? Your momma thought I was plenty handsome last night?” Monroe explained with a hiss of pain as he unbuttoned the front of his shirt.

“Can’t say as I have heard those ones. You’ll have to prove your ugliness, excuse me, I mean handsomeness, another way.”

“Oof, don’t make me laugh.” The big man complained.

“If you didn’t want to be in pain, then you probably shouldn’t have gotten shot.” Trace helped him out of his shirt and shook his head at the armored undershirt the man was wearing. “I hate to say this, but that armor needs to be replaced. Probably did even before you took it out for this last dance party.”

“Yeah, I uh, already kind of knew that.”

“Then why didn’t you- Oh… right, thanks,” Trace exploded, only to settle quickly in realization. All the profits from their last major job had gone toward keeping him alive, and then getting his arm and NetConnect installed. The jobs they had done since then had paid peanuts in comparison to what they had brought home from that job.

The silence stretched into awkward territory as the wrecked armored undershirt came off as well. At last, Trace could see the full extent of the damage. Three actual bullet holes, and six more that had been caught by his armor. Maybe it hadn’t been quite so useless after all.

He made sure to pull out the bullets and then popped the PlugDocs into place. A round of tape and bandages to secure them, and he was good to go. Rather, he was after he had swallowed a couple of Blood-gels with some soda.

They took a few minutes gathering up all their new loot and going through the various vehicles looking for anything good. There was nothing. They had all been empty in preparation for whatever they were going to bring back throughout the day.

Trace made sure to ID each of the raiders before loading them up into a van and sending it over the edge of the road and into the trees. You could collect bounties on raiders, as long as you made sure to properly identify them. It generally wasn’t much, but it added up and was something that they should have done before and hadn’t.

He stopped at the car parked behind the van. He couldn’t help but give it a second look as he remembered how it had exited the trees and fishtailed onto the road. The truck was nice, but it wasn’t exactly fast, and it was also large. This car was smaller, and it seemed like it would be much faster.

“What are you thinking?” Monroe asked, coming up beside him.

“I’m thinking that Black Betty is currently full and has no more room for the loot we just got. I’m also thinking that I want something a bit faster than my truck. What do you think?”

“Will you be able to clear the ownership problems if we get stopped?”

He shook his head. “No, I only have the one system breaching module at the moment, and we’ll need it for the semi.”

“You could still try it, worse that can happen is it gets confiscated.” Monroe lightly scratched at his bandaged chest. “I kind of want to see how fast it goes myself.”