Shateigashira Akihiko Watanabe felt a cold sweat come over him as he logged out of Eternity Online. He wiped at his face with a rag, removing the sweat from his brow. It wouldn’t do for the Shatei of the Yakuza to see him in such a state. Failure for such as his brought the possibility of Yubizume, removing his little finger, as the lesser punishment. A stronger possibility was the oyabun would require him to commit seppuka or else face immediate execution.

He called in his underling, Shateigashira-hosa Shin Saito, into his office. He composed himself into the steely boss of a criminal organization, putting away his rag and straightening out his blacks suit and white long-sleeved shirt to reflect the august appearance of a modern criminal. He put his portly face into a scowl. He was in his fifties, and his still black curly hair receded into a widow’s peak.

Shin walked into the room and made a deep formal bow, holding it in position.

“You failed me,” Akihiko said, trying to make his voice into a rumbling growl. “We were supposed to kill any of our prisoners in the game! Now, we have one free. What does she know?”

“She knows nothing of our overall operation sir,” Shin replied, face still downward to the ground. “We have always taken precautions to make sure that no one knows anything they are not supposed to.”

“Might I make a suggestion, sir?” he continued, “That we simply find the person in their pod and execute them?”

“No,” Akihiko grumbled. “There’s a high chance she will simply become a Reborn Player Character, and we will lose a source of income as well as not accomplishing anything. Do you have a picture of the man we shot at?”

Shin pulled out his tablet and handed it to his boss. Mark’s picture in the game as seen through the sniper scope appeared. When Akihiko flipped to the next screen, it showed Luciana as she pulled the trigger on the assassin. Another swipe showed a picture of Chon. He tapped his finger on the picture.

“Do we have her old name?” Akihiko asked.

“No sir,” Shin replied, “We have everyone on a rotating cycle. As soon as they die, they get reloaded back into the game with a random name generator and build. It would be very inefficient to keep track of all the people individually.”

As with most companies facing the choice between doing things right or doing things in the easiest way, the Yakuza fell on the “easy” side of the equation.

“We could have used that to track her down. No matter, these two are the real targets,” Ikihiko said, swiping back and forth between the pictures of Mark and Luciana. “Spread these images out to all of our men. We don’t know if they’re PCs or NPCs, but we should keep a lookout in any case.”

“Get all of our men to take missions with the Federation so we can begin leveling them up and get them ready for other missions. Start keeping track of our assets better, as you’re supposed to. Dismissed.”

Shin finally got up from his long bow and left the room. Akihiko went back to freaking out. He couldn’t expect to hide this from the Oyobun forever, and knew that eventually, it would reach him and his accursed wife. If he didn’t have the situation under control by then, he was a dead man.

Mark finished filing for Chon’s new identity under witness protection. With her upgrades into financing and the game’s prebuilt backstory, hiding her wouldn’t be much of an issue. The governor’s request to see them had been upgraded to “Very Urgent”, so he planned on meeting the governor with Luciana and Vidal in tow.

His afternoon consisted of beating the Marines, four out of five times, in virtual combat scenarios. The new pads installed on the Void Terror gave it the ability to move in place like a treadmill on segments of area, as well as adjust height like a stair stepper. Even though the person in the training area was only moving in place, the visor helmet kept track of the person’s steps and proximity to teammates and other combatives.

Using EVE to keep track of where the enemies were in the battlefield, it easy to flank and outmaneuver them. Unfortunately, he couldn’t deal with a Marine in a head-on combat position, so if it came down to a shootout, he lost. He upgraded his small arms combat skill to level three, and his total character points down to sixteen, which put him on more even footing against them, even if he wasn’t at a Marine’s combat level yet.

After the simulated drill, 1SG Vidal Roger came over to him.

“Never seen such good ground tactics from a wing nut before,” the nickname Marines usually gave to military personnel that flew missions. “I can see why you have such a reputation amongst your people. Hooah Captain.”

Mark was glad that his performance seemed to energize the Marines, even if it was a cheap trick. He’d still leave Luciana to most of the ground tactics and fighting strategies if it came down to it. She was out getting supplies for their next mission run. It might be a bust, but Mark wanted to make sure that everything went smoothly.

He showered and dressed into his finest civilian clothing, as did Luciana and Vidal. He didn’t trust the Governor, as it seemed too coincidental that those containers entered on board the planet, despite the fact that he and his crew went through extensive clearance at their entrance to the space port. It was possible, theoretically, that there was another docking port somewhere that was used to make a landing, but this was a full-scale inhabited planet with satellites, tracking radars, and intercontinental ballistic missiles. Any unauthorized entry would quickly be either shot down or tracked.

Anti-radar cloaking was a possibility, and the operation he saw could support that sort of expensive equipment, but it seemed far easier to simply bribe a few officials and have them turn a blind eye than it did to run a separate space docking facility, pull in everyone under anti-radar and cloaking schemes, and then offload all of the equipment. Too many variables in the that scenario.

Mark then put on his over-garments, a multispectral chameleon skin full body suit. When you didn’t activate the cloaking capabilities, it looked like whatever the garments underneath were. Once you activated it, it blended into the background. It did have a major disadvantage, and that was camouflage broke up when you moved around in it as the suit adjusted to its new surroundings, but overall, the suit worked marvelously.

He called in the Marines to the briefing room.

“Listen up everyone. We’re going to move in ten teams of four. Each team will be given a pre-loaded van or truck.” Some of the Marines started grumbling. Not surprisingly, the Marines wanted to use their souped up ATVs, but that was way too conspicuous.

“You will be stationed at different waypoints along the route to the governor’s mansion. If there’s going to be an attack, it will probably not be while we’re on the way to the mansion. Almost certainly, it will be on our way back. Your job will be to catalogue each of the vehicles behind us. Captain Smith and 1SG Roger will go in one set of vehicles, I will go in another. PFC Preuss will be performing guard duty in my vehicle again, outstanding work last time around.”

The Private beamed. Usually if you were recognized as a lower enlisted, it wasn’t for good reasons.

“If the same vehicle appears in more than two call points, call it in. After we egress, each team will fall in behind us. If we get into a fight, try to quarantine the fight zone or use non-lethal ammo. Switch to lethal ammo if the situation requires it, however. Questions?”

No one raised their hands. The Marines fell out into their vehicles. Vidal and Luciana walked up to Mark.

“We’re getting there very early. The invitation was for 1900 hours.” Vidal remarked.

“Yes,” Mark said, “But if the governor is part of this conspiracy, that would give him time to set up his ambush. If we get there early, that means that the governor will either have to hold us there for several hours or they’ll have to move fast, which means they’ll move sloppy. If he’s not part of the conspiracy, he’ll be mildly annoyed at us.”

Mark saw a notification appear that his disadvantages of “Lazy” and “Jealousy” had been removed. He still had his “cheater” disadvantage, so he guessed the game wasn’t going to let him go just yet.

Both wore their ceremonial vibroblade and blasters at their side, Luciana wore a black pantsuit with cylindrical high heels. When she clicked them together, they became running shoes. Vidal wore a vibrant blue suit with a frilly white undershirt and blue suede shoes. Focusing on the shirt revealed the technical name, “Bellamy shirt”. Mark doubted many people could pull off the look, but the muscular gargoyle looked at home in it, and no one with an ounce of intellect was going to call out the man for his fashion sense.

The plan was for the two of them to stall the governor while Mark swept his place. He attached his web gear and hooked up all of his sensors from last time. They parked the vehicle a good thousand yards from the Governor’s mansion.

“Everyone, check in,” Mark said. Each time responded that they were in position and that no one tailed Mark. He first deployed the bug drones to the Governor’s mansion. Despite the obvious wealth, there were no real security measures outside from the fence that barred the entrance and the guard station leading the way in. Mark raced to the perimeter of the fence, blending into the background scenery.

The car holding Vidal and Luciana pulled up, and Mark used an electromagnetic autograpnel to shoot over the twenty foot barrier and pull himself up and over. Not getting his suit cut up was the hardest part, as he rappelled down the opposite side into the court yard. The bug drones showed him the main power circuit to the house, and he set up an explosive limpet mine there. If the governor was clean, they’d pull it on the way out. But if guests were coming, they’d cut the power to the house first, and he wanted to have a surprise waiting for them if they did.

The next task was breaking into the communication system in the house. Mark decided to bring his communication surveillance skill up to level 4, and after the memories passed, he went to work using his communication and programming skills to hack the wireless system. The hack was vastly easier. The entire house was wired into each other, but some of the firmware hadn’t been updated against known attacks. Because, who the hell updated their firmware?

In particular, a group of smart bulbs in the house communicated on the same wifi password as the rest of the house. Each smart bulb came hardwired with the same cryptographic key. Using that key, Mark obtained sysadmin access to the bulb, and logged onto the built-in server each bulb had. From there, he routed captured all traffic going through the system. He checked to make sure he could see through the droid kitchen staff that busily prepared food. The whole operation took ten minutes.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

Mark’s last go around was to survey the house for points of entry and exit. Stairs, windows, doors, and any weak points that someone could simply charge through. He also noted a potential air assault point, though he didn’t think anyone would try that, it always paid to jot those things down. With all that in place, he exited the house. The guard’s tower temporarily had a frozen image of an empty courtyard while he rappelled his way to the outside, and made his way back to the van.

He stripped off his chameleon suit and wore his regular attire. “Okay Private, let’s go in.”

They made their way to the guard station yet again, and a quick eye scan revealed his identity and the private’s.

“You can’t go in,”the gate guard said to Private Preuss. He was an older, portly man. Probably well past retirement.

“He can and he will. Otherwise, I’ll get the governor out here and explain the situation to him. Forcefully.” Mark said, meeting the guard’s gaze. “You’re call if this becomes a diplomatic crisis.”

The guard sighed and hit his data pad. “Sir, Captain Smith is here to see you with a Private Preuss. Is the private authorized?”

“Just let him in,” the governor said. Mark smiled at the guard, who released the magnetic locks and let them into the main courtyard.

It was only a few cars in a parking lot, presumably the governor’s, Luciana and Vidal’s, his, and a few other cars, probably belonging to security. He got out the car and went inside.

He saw Luciana and Vidal being entertained by the governor, which seemed to mean reciting a history of past governor’s as he went over their official portraits. Luciana and Vidal glared daggers at him, presumably upset that he left them alone with the governor for nearly an hour, but he shrugged.

“Ah, you finally arrived. Hope nothing too important came up?” the governor asked him. The governor was a wire-thin man, with a single patch of bald hair at the back of his head, and the tan skin of most of the people on the planet. There were only four guards in the entire mansion, each looking at their ceremonial weapons suspiciously.

“Just typical administration stuff, filling in every detail in triplicate detail. Nothing to worry about. Also, your men can stop eyeballing us so hard. These weapons are for show.”

He pulled out his vibroblade and showed them that the C cell battery wasn’t in it.

“So we can’t attack you with these, same with the laser gun. These are strictly for pomp and ceremony.” He pulled it out for inspection, very slowly, to show the guards that there was nothing in it. They seemed to relax a little bit.

“Well, let’s have dinner then, and we can discuss the activities that took place a few nights ago.”

The dinner was fully cooked meal of butter-poached scallops on celeriac purée with meyer lemon nage and lemon confit. Like all fancy meals, what that actually translated into is “very small portions of expensive stuff.”

For Mark, who didn’t have a huge appetite, this probably wasn’t a problem, but his illustriously coiffed first sergeant was surely in for disappointment. Sauvignon blanc was served the wine pairing with the food. Each member of his team slid a portion of the food under the table and scanned it. Food and drink could contain nano tracers, nerve poisons, or even a parasite worm. Or just plain old salmonella. Even though their host was eating and drinking what looked like the same thing, the discrete nature of the food and the possibility for poisoning the individual equipment made it a precaution. Fortunately, no one had anything they didn’t expect with their food.

“So,” the governor began, “the raid in the warehouse. How did you find out about it?”

“Part of an ongoing investigation,” Mark said, “Even though we didn’t expect to find anything here, space pirates have been able to access weapons that are higher quality than something you could whip together with a fabricator. Not unless you had a weapons engineer on board the ship, and the exact right materials, which seemed unlikely to the IIO.”

“I see,” the governor said, “But why here exactly?”

“Intel gathered through Vidal there,” he gestured with his fork, “He was part of a bounty hunter group that looked for runaways. He said there was a big shipment of weapons going down and wanted to collect a reward on it. We thought he and his crew did such an admirable job we hired them full-time.”

“Nothing else but weapons then? How do you know these weren’t manufactured?”

“The sighting crystals and lasers. They have to be individually calibrated and built, and the materials aren’t cheap. When you do this by mass manufacturer, they don’t hold up well. A few shots go the wrong direction or the whole thing blows up. That’s one reason why space pirates still use the old projectile style weapons of yesteryear. So when we find lots of laser weapons, well, we get very curious.”

“One of our curiosities,” Mark continued, “Is that there seems to be a strict procedure for having items scanned on arrival. We underwent it with our clearance levels. Yet somehow, several of these weapons made it onto your planet. Have you been investigating this?”

The governor chewed on his scallop and swallowed, then replied, “Yes, I’ve been very concerned. I’ve had my police chief go through the records for how these men arrived, but they don’t show up on any official records or docks.”

“So you just have a mysterious sieve in your planetary docking procedures?” Mark asked. “Do we need to conduct a full-scale audit to find out where, perhaps, this sieve is located?”

The governor had a flash of anger, then returned to his usual composure. “We don’t need the IIO crawling all over our affairs. It’s being handled internally. We’ll find out how smugglers are getting on our planet and stop them. I just find it… miraculous that you were able to find all this information out so quickly.”

“That’s me,” Mark said, with a grin, “I’m the miracle man. Rainbow and sunshine everywhere I go.”

The governor took out his data pad and looked at it.

“I’m sorry, but I have an important call to take. We’ll be bringing out dessert in a minute. Macaroons and Plum Clafouti.” He walked out of the room, typing into his data pad.

Vidal gave Mark a quizzical look and he clarified, “Cookies and pie.”

“Hope it’s more than what they gave us for dinner,” the first sergeant replied glumly. “That barely qualified as dinner mints.”

“When this is over, I’ll stop and get you whatever you want,” Luciana assured him. That seemed to brighten his spirits.

EVE showcased the conversation in his combat contacts.

“They’re here. Eating.”

“Good, keep them there. Can you poison them?”

“WHAT? No. There wouldn’t be much of an investigation if they were just found poisoned in my house!”

Mark gave the signal to his team. It was time to get ready. Luciana excused herself. “I need to go to the ladies room.” She went up to one of the guards and asked him, “Can you please show me where the ladies room is?” She held out her arm like she expected an escort. The guard nearest her took her arm and walked her down to the bathroom. Mark saw the messages keep streaming by.

“Well, maybe just something to slow them down, not kill them.”

“No. This is your mess. You take them out. Leave me out of this. You said there would be no evidence leading back to me. So you deal with it.”

Luciana pulled out a modified hyperdermic needle gun from her pistol. It didn’t have the battery crystal of the laser, true, but the compressed air could shoot up to fifty yards. She shot it into her guard, caught him as he fell, and dragged him into the bathroom. One down.

“Okay, you stall them. We’ll be arriving in thirty minutes. Give them lots of alcohol, lots of food. That’ll slow them down. Can you at least pull your weight that much?”

“What do you mean we’ll be there in thirty minutes? You can’t shoot down this place, there’s priceless paintings on the wall for God’s sake!”

Vidal’s approach was decisively less subtle. He walked up to the first guard he saw and punched him square in the chin. The guard’s legs turned to rubber and while he was falling down, Vidal pulled out his hypodermic needle gun and shot the guard nearest him. Before Mark could even finish moving, Vidal continued his turn and finished off the third guard. Three seconds from start to finish. Mark hated to think what Vidal would move like if he had an implant like his. His data pad continued the feed from his unknown assailants and .

“The painting or your ass. Which is worth more to you? If we ambush them at your house, it makes it look like we were actually trying to kill you. You’ll win reelection easily, everyone loves a sympathetic story. Go upstairs, you must have a panic room in there, lock yourself in with your guards, and we’ll wipe out the ground floor. Quick strikes, in and out.”

“Give me some time to move the valuables upstairs.”

“Don’t do it you idiot, that will tip them off. Just go upstairs and wait. After we’ve left, call in the police.”

“What about my guard outside? He’ll be killed in the ambush.”

“Collateral damage. Pay to have him revived if it means so much to you. Now go upstairs.”

The governor put down his data pad and turned around. He found himself staring at a needle gun. “Hi,” Mark said, before injecting the governor. The governor dropped down and Mark awkwardly caught him before he could hit his head on the ground. Luciana and Vidal handcuffed the guards they dropped and moved them upstairs. Mark first used a fingerprint scanner on the governor, then fireman carried him upstairs.

“Private Preuss,” he ordered, “Dose the guard at the front gate, bring him inside with the vehicle, and open up the gates so our people can get in here.”

Using the connected data feed, Mark found the panic room and opened it. It was inside the governor’s main room. There were guns, water, food, and ammunition in there, but nothing compared to what they already had. They loaded the bodies in there. Twenty-five minutes remaining until contact. By his estimation, four of his team could get to the building before contact.

“Teams Alpha through Delta, make your way in. Echo through Juliet, quarantine the area so no innocents get caught in the crossfire. Setup a defensive perimeter so if any of them escape, we have them.”

Vidal ran out to the van and pulled out gear and equipment, with Mark and Luciana following. Christopher Preuss ran in with the final guard while everyone else started scrambling with the gear. Inside were sets of reflex armor combined with bioplas covering. Bioplas is a thin, self-healing material that can absorb laser damage, provided that it has enough time to reseal the gap. They quickly put on their gear and synced up their helmets. The combat contacts were great, for what they were, but the enhanced systems operation from a full helmet couldn’t be beat. They could see two teams approaching the gate, one truck and one van.

“After you extract your gear,” Mark ordered into the helmet, “Park far away from the main entrance. We’re going to give them a surprise when they enter.”

While the other two teams were getting dressed and pulling out their gear, their squad, nicknamed Zulu, began barricading the windows with nanocarbon alloy shutters. A battering ram could knock it off the hinges, but it would probably hold against a hastily prepared crew scrambling to get there. The middle part could open up to allow a rifleman on the inside to fire outside.

After the other team finished dressing, they did the same with the upstairs windows. It prevented both an easy point of entry and prevented anyone from simply throwing a molotov cocktail into the room and burning them out. Which would be a supremely terrible way to die. Delta and Echo arrived five minutes later. By Mark’s calculation, they had maybe ten minutes until the assault began. Droid bugs hooked up into a neural network above all the fences, perched inside the deciduous tree leaves of the areas and sweeping the areas.

Mark’s final move was to move the governor’s car in front of the house, and to move the guard’s cars into other locations. If they attempted to ram through the gates, or to use those cars as cover, they were getting a nasty surprise. Looking through the tactical helmet, he could see that his people put up the mounted machine guns and set up reinforced deployable plating upstairs, giving them an egress route once the downstairs area became flooded with people. Ammo waypoints had also been established along their egress routes, along with command detonation limpet mines. They were as prepared as they could be for the assault.