It turned out that CL30s was already open, even though it was only 2 p.m. But it wasn't surprising for the residents here, considering that no one cared about rules and conventions here. The "bar", if you could call it that, had been built from an old office building, which was placed in front of a warehouse, and the gate house of the main gate. Thick LED neon tubes bathed the roof and upper walls in a strong pink, while thinner tubes ran along the wall and formed CL30 in bright green.
The owner, Cleo, was a tall woman of apparent Egyptian descent, which would explain the name, and was dressed in sturdy military trousers and a simple top. "Here you two, something nice and delicious to get you started," she said as she placed two fruity cocktails on the high bar table outside the bar, "and this is to get started afterwards." This time, two small shot glasses with light blue liquid were presented. Whatever was in it, it was beautiful. Aurelia completely lost herself in the swirling colors of bright blues, from sky to cobalt there were dozens of colors, all recognizable at the same moment. "How is that possible?" murmured Aurelia as she stared at the glass. "How is something possible?" came from Blurr, who now also looked into Aurelia's glass. "Well, the many colors that are in there, how can you see them all so clearly?" If Aurelia had been able to tear her attention away from the intriguing drink, her confused expression on her face would have been noticeable. "Are you high or something?" she asked worriedly, "that's just blue." I can confirm," Cleo chimed in, who was now also staring into Aurelia's shot. "No, I see a bunch of colors, I swear to you!" "Aurelia. As much as I enjoy witnessing when you embarrass yourself in front of others, I have to point out to you that no one else can see what you call 'Many Colors'. Your Advanced Eye uses the hardware using software I created to show you subtle particle differences in the liquid. It would be good not to openly express your abilities, as this could infer me. Please. Stop it." Aurelia froze. After blinking several times, she leaned back awkwardly and tried, in vain, emphatically casually to communicate: "I must have tripped briefly. Everything is fine, I see normally again." This brought her even more confused looks. Blurr leaned close to her and asked softly, "What's wrong with you and where can I get the stuff that makes you wrong? Your description sounded mega cool." "I'm neither wrong nor high, I just had a short brain fart, nothing more. Shall we?" with that she raised the cocktail in Blurr's direction, who did the same after a few seconds and toasted with her.
"Is much better than the drinks from the dive bars in town, and cheaper. Mh. Another reason why people live here voluntarily. I'm starting to understand it really well," Blurr said after she had emptied the cocktail in a few puffs. "Just two hours ago, you were of the opposite opinion. Did food and alcohol really change your mind so much?" "If you knew what the food tasted like that I had to eat the last few weeks and before that the synth food from the city... And alcohol is always a good argument." She raised the shot, looked into it again and, apparently satisfied, poured it down her throat. "Uhhhhhhh he's burning. A bit of a strange taste, but actually quite ok. Come on, you now," she looked at Aurelia expectantly. She put down her half-finished cocktail and grabbed the shimmering blue drink. One. Two. Three. Her throat broke out in fire, which stretched down to her stomach, where it turned into a pleasant warmth. "And? What do you think of it?" came from Blurr, but Aurelia had to struggle to banish the fire before she could answer. "Tastes ok, but it burns endlessly." "Yes, man, finally a drink that's worth the money." "If you mean" came soberly from Aurelia. Well, not completely sober anymore.
"Don't you like alcohol, huh?" blurr asked, while she ordered more shots with wild gestures. Either that, or she had a strange kind of seizure. Aurelia had only been allowed to taste wine during masses in the convent and had no other alcohol. Accordingly, Blurr was not wrong. What Aurelia would never admit, however, she answered instead: "I like wine more. But I'm open to new things" "Here you two" Two more shots were brought and flowed directly into Aurelia and Blurr.
The effect of the alcohol became clear after some time and more drinks and Aurelia had to hold on to the table to avoid falling over. Blurr seemed to be much more used to it, as she was still standing upright for the most part and asked: "Yo, everything ok with you nun?" Aurelia glared at her latest acquaintance and tried with all her strength to sound sober when she answered: "It's all Tippi Toppi with me" she failed miserably and Blurr burst out laughing.
But before she could say anything about it, she heard a familiar voice behind her: "Hey new, we have to go and I don't want to wait for you anymore just because you're looking for the old one!" Parker sounded annoyed and angry. Which was understandable, Aurelia had completely forgotten that he had existed at all. She turned to him and slurred, "Oh sorry Park, I was a bit distracted." With difficulty, she staggered in his direction, while Blurr writhed with laughter and breathlessly squeezed out: "Have fun ahahaha" Parker's gaze was gloomy, but before Aurelia could say anything when she finally reached him, he turned and walked towards his hut. "We have a task Ex, you can get drunk at any other time. I got a tip, there is a warehouse a few kilometers away that has not been actively used for a few years and now has only very light protection. It's supposed to be from BlackMahr Tech, with a bunch of old cyberware that is no longer sold. We'll go in, grab the stuff and bring it here, then we'll see what we can use and what we can sell." Aurelia struggled to keep up with him until she was finally able to catch up with him when he took a rifle and a pistol from his workshop. He turned to her: "Do you still need weapons, or do you have what you need? And please drink a coffee or something, so that you are at least a little sober up. The way to our goal is quite long, I hope it's enough so that you don't pose a danger to yourself, or me." "No, I have everything" came from Aurelia while she tried to talk to Raya without saying the words: "Is there an anti-drunk stim or something?" "Yes. For 10 coins. Should I buy it?" "Yes, please, but can you teleport it into my hand behind my back so that Parker doesn't notice?" Shortly afterwards, she felt the weight of a small stim injector in her left hand, which she held out of Parker's sight. She waited for a moment when she could use it unnoticed and then threw the stim into one of the many piles of garbage.
It worked wonders! Within a few seconds, she became completely sober and it felt as if she had been slowed down from 200 km/h to 0 in a car. Parker seemed to have noticed this, because he asked, "What's going on? You look like someone hit you in the face." "Oh, uh, yes, all good, I had a few instant coffee cubes that I ate just like that made me a little more sober." His eyebrow rose, but Parker didn't go into it any further, but shouldered his rifle and set off, presumably to the common goal of the two.
Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.
The path turned out to be much longer than Aurelia had assumed. Or maybe it just felt that way because Parker refused to engage in conversations. Every time she asked a question, she only got an emphatically short answer. But she could understand it. When Aurelia had seen Blurr, she was in a trance and had left Parker standing and finally completely forgotten that he even existed. In fact, she almost felt sorry for it. Almost. If it had been Bear instead of Parker, she would feel really bad, but Bear was also just a different kind of person than the scrap collector.
"Up there," came from Parker, who slowed his pace and knelt. The two had been on the road for a good two hours. Aurelia stumbled over him, too lost in her thoughts. "Fuck," she exclaimed as she landed on her butt. "Damn it, get your drunk ass under control." "Yes, sorry" She picked herself up and knelt next to him and asked: "What exactly is the plan? Through the front door and just knock everyone down right away, or sneak in and turn everyone off quietly before we grab the stuff?" He looked at her in shock: "We're not going to kill anyone here, you madman. We sneak in, take as much as we can carry and leave." "Really?" "Yes. Really." "But if we move the people in there, we can take our time with the equipment and take everything with us. That makes much more sense." "Maybe, but we're not killers. We only kill when it is absolutely necessary." "You may not be a killer, but I'm not such a wimp. I'll take care of the guards and you just come along, how does that sound?" "NO! If you want to belong to the municipality, then you have to follow our rules! And that means: NO KILLING IF IT IS AVOIDABLE! Did you understand me?" "Yes, yes, it's good" And she had been looking forward to a bit of action.
The warehouse, even if only roughly to be described as such, was a small house, little more than a hut, with a total of five soldiers, in BlackMahr uniforms spread around it. Three sat in chairs around the warehouse and the other two leaned against the big black SUV with the Corp logo. All of them had light armor, machine guns, as well as pistols on their sides. The equipment didn't seem anything special, but solid. So they were not without danger. Aurelia was curious to see how Parker wanted to sneak in without force, that there seemed to be only one entrance, where one of the guards sat in his chair. She lay flat on her stomach, took her rifle, whereupon she heard a hiss from Parker and justified herself: "I want to use the scope, get an old man." "Fine. But woe betide you if you fire." "Don't worry, but how are you going to get in there now? They are well positioned, well equipped and seem to be well trained." "Good question. But we'll find a way. Let's first observe how they behave down there. There may be an opportunity." Aurelia's trigger finger itched so terribly as she looked from guard to guard, imagining how she turned one by one into Bloody Goop.
After four hours of waiting, there was still no good time, even when the changing of the guard had taken place thirty minutes ago. The new soldiers had positioned themselves just like the previous ones and seemed just as uninterested in giving up their posts. "Parker, that's ridiculous. Let's go down and take them out, there won't be any opportunity, even you have to realize that slowly." "First: Rules! Secondly, these are trained corpo soldiers, with good equipment, we'd die before we got close enough, even if we could take a few of them with us! It's far too dangerous. We'll retire for now and come back when else." While Parker slowly crawled backwards, Aurelia looked at him completely aghast. "Dude," she murmured, took aim at one of the two on the vehicle with Exodus and pulled the trigger.
The torso exploded in red mist, splashing fluid and shredded organs. While the guards panicked, Aurelia took aim at the second SUV and fired. His left leg was shredded and he fell to the ground. Aurelia had aimed at the head. "Shit" She got up and sprinted to a small pile of garbage, behind which she was protected from the fire from the machine guns. She switched to her blender and waited until the bullets stopped and peeked out, at the last moment she was able to duck her head again as more bullets came in her direction. "Raya, smoke grenade!" A long bullet appeared in her hand with a pin on the side, she pulled the pin with her teeth and threw the grenade between her pile of garbage and her opponents, waiting for the hissing of the smoke to spread. She sprinted off and catapulted herself forward with her augmented leg, towards the camp. When she broke out of the smoke, she found herself right in front of a BlackMahr Corpo and managed to lower her shoulder and crash into him at the last moment without falling herself. Her weight wasn't enough to throw the soldiers to the ground, but that wasn't necessary, because she had bought herself an important second in which she raised her dazzler and pulled the trigger twice. With a disgusting sound, the two bladed projectiles shredded the chest and abdomen region, leaving a pain-bent corpse.
After Aurelia had put her gun back, crouched down, tensed her cyberleg and shot up to the roof of the one-story building. She held on to the edge and pulled herself up, there she pulled her gladio. Carefully and quietly, she crawled towards the door and tried to make out her last two targets. She saw a soldier directly below her, who had set up a mobile sign in front of him and was waiting behind it in cover. She couldn't see the other, but she could hear him, he had taken cover behind his colleague on the corner. So he was their first target. Slowly she moved directly over him, raising her sword in front of her with the blade straight down. She let herself fall. Without any real resistance, the sword slid through the unsuspecting corpo while she crashed to the ground behind him, a little too loudly. She could hear the one with the shield moving and she jumped around the corner and swung her sword wildly around her before she realized that he was a good deal further away than she had expected. So their sword swings only cut air. This gave her counterpart the chance to fire at her.
She threw herself to the side and avoided being hit directly in the face, but the ensuing shots tore seven holes across her body. Hot pain fell over Aurelia and her vision narrowed, as if she were looking through a blinding tunnel of light. But she saw the soldier as a smeared shadow still in front of her, as he pointed his weapon at her again. Before she could think, her arm had already made the decision to throw the sword in the direction of the shadow. This probably saved her life, because she heard the gun firing through the rustling in her ears, but apparently in a completely wrong direction, while the shadow collapsed. Before she could make sure that her opponent was really out of action, the tunnel narrowed further and further before she fell into unconsciousness.