They couldn’t know exactly how long it would be until the remaining Green Jackets started wondering about their three missing comrades. But Gaylen didn’t want to risk giving it more than an hour. And as he already had a plan in place, it was just a matter of being efficient at putting it in action.

Their chosen ground was before the grand entrance to what had apparently been meant as the admin building for the whole city core. The corp equivalent of a city hall. It was as dark and forlorn as the rest of the whole place, but the outline one could see with night-vision was elegant and eye-catching. The entrance consisted of several doors side-by-side, up a short but wide staircase, and up above it hung a huge screen that had probably been intended to show a corp logo, in between important announcements.

More importantly, the parking lot in front of it all was dotted with almost man-high concrete boxes. They held trees that had died without anyone tending to them, but still made for pretty good cover.

With everything in place, Gaylen looked up Sammy’s number on the stolen comm, and made a call. The man responded in what sounded like some sort of local pidgin tongue.

“Hello, Sammy,” Gaylen said. “You don’t know my name, I think, but you know my voice, right?”

“What are you doing with this comm, butt-pump?” the gangster told him icily. “And why aren’t you dead?”

“You got your gang with you?”

“Oh, I’ve got my gang here, don’t you worry!”

“Why don’t you let them in on this conversation? I’ve got something to say to all of you.”

Gaylen heard a faint beep.

“Go ahead, buddy,” Sammy told him belligerently. “You’ve got an audience.”

“Well, boys, I’ve got your three boys. The ones on the bike, who I guess were your perimetre guards or something. They are alive, but they aren’t happy. I want to do an exchange: Three guys for one guy. That’s a pretty good deal, right? I want the man you’ve been holding. The one you were going to hand off to those Heg agents. They’re dead, anyway, so you’re not going to get anything out of them. So cut your losses, eh? With everything that’s happened, I don’t think you can afford to lose three more men. Come meet me in front of the admin tower. Where the big sign is, and those dead trees. I’m sure you know it. Bring the man I want, and I’ll have your boys there. No funny stuff. I’ll be ready for it. You have twenty minutes.”

Gaylen ended the call. He didn’t know Sammy well enough to know if he gave a damn about his comrades, in any meaningful way. Given prior experience with the type, he actually rather doubted it. But having the conversation on speaker, for the rest of the gang to hear, would make it hard for him to just ignore the whole thing.

And, again based on prior experience, he didn’t doubt that the man wanted one last chance for payback. So he’d come.

“Right,” he said into the crew’s joint channel. “Things are in motion.”

“I’m doing my part,” Ayna replied, away and out of sight.

“Ready,” Herdis said.”

Everyone else was within speaking distance. He had Bers and Kiris with him by the car, both armed with working guns, and Jaquan was a bit further back, tucked behind one of the concrete boxes with a compact rifle. Halfway between the car and the building was the bike, stashed there as a little backup.

There had been other options for a meeting place, with a similar tactical viability. But this one had the advantage of being a dead end. Only one road led down to the parking lot, past rows of connected buildings, meaning the Green Jackets only had one route if they wanted to so much as pretend to want to play this straight. There were other entrances into the administration building, of course, but nothing one could fit a car through, and a camera placed inside the lobby would pick up anyone trying to get behind them..

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With a few minutes to spare, and nothing more to do, Gaylen found his mind wandering ever so slightly. His eyes travelled to the front of the admin building, and its big, blank screen, fully visible to him via night-vision specs.

“What is funny?” Kiris asked.

He didn’t think he’d actually smiled, but the woman was a Chanei, as he was frequently reminded.

He pointed to the front.

“Here we are, in the heart of failed ambitions. I wonder if Sammy and his boys have the depth to grasp the irony.”

Now Kiris smiled, with a cruel cut to it.

“I doubt it,” she replied.

After that, he worked on focusing himself. And soon enough, with six minutes remaining of the deadline he’d set, Herdis chimed in from her perch.

“They’re coming,” she told everyone.

And with that, Gaylen was fully focused. He checked his gun, his vest, his coat, the fit of his boots, one last time. Kiris closed her eyes and took a slow, even breath. Bers made no noises. Just wiggled his fingers a bit around the handle of his axe. As Gaylen turned his head, he found Jaquan in place, giving him an assuring nod.

They came in a boxy car, big enough to seat about a dozen people. Or a small cargo shipment. Whatever it was, it came in slowly, and halfway down the street a window opened and something was fired up into the sky. It got a reaction out of Gaylen, but what came to a stop about thirty metres in the air was a simple light-drone. It cast a grey illumination over the general area, enough for everyone to see everyone.

Of course, attaching a modest bomb to something like that was neither hard nor all that uncommon as a trick, but Jaquan had set up a small defence battery that would automatically intercept anything coming down at a certain speed. And if Sammy had about half a brain, which he kind of seemed to, he would at least wait until he had his three men back.

“Let’s play these final moves,” Kiris muttered softly.

“Yeah,” Gaylen replied. “Bers. Promise me: Don’t get impatient.”

The man was sporting that feral grin of his, and just made a chuckle-like throat noise. Gaylen was cautiously optimistic he would behave himself. Until someone else kicked off violence, that is.

The car came to a stop, a short distance from their rent-car, and Gaylen got a call on his stolen comm. The car he and the crew had rented was fitted strategically across the street, in between two concrete boxes, so it blocked the way in as much as possible. Sammy could probably ram it aside, but that was the only way he’d get to them in his own car.

Gaylen carefully poked his head above the hood, and answered the call.

“Alright, asshole,” Sammy said. “We have what you want. Do you have what we want?”

“I sure do,” Gaylen said. “Inside the building behind me, under guard. Consider my car our little… border, for this.”

“I want to see them.”

“No.”

There was a pregnant silence. Ayna didn’t check in with anything new, nor did Herdis, though he knew both women were at work.

“So,” Sammy then said tersely. “We bring your guy out, and march him over there? That’s how you want to play this?”

“Yes. You bring him up to the car, then let him walk around. Once we have him, we’ll send your guys out.”

“Alright,” Sammy said, with fake ease. “Alright.”

Two side doors opened on that big box of a car, and men stepped out on each side. They used it as a cover, and did nothing to hide the fact that they were armed. There were pistols, and bigger guns with a stock, much like cheaper versions of what the Heg agents had carried. A couple also had long blades, and one man even carried his in hand. The fellow did a little twirl of his wrist, limbering up for fighting. Or just for showing off.

Finally, once eight men were out of the car, they brought Mardus out as well. Seeing him again, after all this time, was a strange feeling, but Gaylen stomped it down immediately. He could afford feelings once this was over.

His hands were bound behind his back, and he looked rather ragged. His hair was shorter than he’d worn it back in the day, and he was clad in a few shades of blue. Sammy took hold of his left arm, and another man took his right, and all three started a slow walk towards the rent-car.