With the outside cleared out, I had some time to prep just in case something bad happened. So I went over to the HMG turret, it hadn’t spotted me yet, and with just a moment's work turned it off, reset its targeting to the gonks data, and then started it back up. Then I aimed it at the entrance.

Heh.

If they were in a car and really moving, it likely wouldn’t hit them, but if they came out on foot, or came out in a car slowly, that HMG would tear them up.

I spent a few minutes looking around for anything else of use, but it looks like most of the stuff on the surface was trash. I mean there was literally a pit that they threw all of their trash away at. Gross.

With that I was ready. I walked back to the entrance, and once more slipped into the camera system.

There were a few cameras deeper into the cave, and I used them now. Slowly looking through the three additional viewpoints inside. One showed me the hallway just inside the mine.

The other was panning over a larger room that looked like their taken over garage.

I took a moment to scan the vehicles I could see, but didn’t find the car that I was here to find. The camera couldn’t see everything, but it was a sign that we were at the wrong place.

Which didn’t impact me at all, because these fuckers were Wraiths. There were a few non-wraith vehicles in the garage I could see that had very obviously been shot up.

Not even touching on the more civilian vehicles that were definitely people they had chosen for kidnapping.

I knew that because the last camera showed a fucking cage of all things. Thankfully it was empty.

With Ping I had locations of the Wraiths, and I started planning out my route.

Then I rose, my vision returning to my own eyes as I slipped inside. The camera at the end of the stone shaft only picked me up as a small blur as I darted in the darkness.

Three of them were in the garage room.

The three were doing normal things, checking out their rides, and relaxing. They had no reason to think there was any danger here after all. They had defenses, cameras, and even a watch guard.

I slipped in, slipping between the Nomad upgraded vehicles like a wraith myself.

FIrst gonk was out of sight of the others sitting in the driver seat of his car, fiddling with some dash installation. I slammed the knife into his throat and yanked him right down, so they couldn’t see him through the windows. I left him gurgling to death bleeding out over the tile with near silent drops onto the concrete.

Number two and three were close together, shooting the shit while they did maintenance. Luckily I had two weapons.

I leapt slamming my knife in and out of a throat in a rush of movement as I lined up the shot and fired. The near silent shot slammed into his skull, and I took a moment to shoot another two rounds into the man just to make sure he couldn’t send an alert or something.

Then it was quiet.

*500 XP Gained.*

*500 XP Gained.*

*500 XP Gained.*

*Ninjutsu skill level up!*

Ninjutsu level 9. I hadn’t even noticed it leveling while taking out this group, but that was amazing! I took a moment to just feel the minor adjustments it guided me towards, how to move just that much faster while remaining silent.

I moved on. The garage area led into a dense set of hab buildings. Probably the mines original offices, or crew quarters.

I moved up to the front entrance and readied myself. There were no cameras inside.

No way to know what was coming. Lexington was reloaded and ready, and I opened the door. Just a hallway with a few doors leading off. I blinked and the golden lights of Ping showed me where the people were. I smiled as I narrowed down on one that was alone behind the first door. I stalked over and slowly peaked the door open.

Bedroom.

Sleeping gonk. A few moments later he was dead.

*500 XP Gained.*

I crept out and frowned.

The next batch weren’t alone. They were all together.

I narrowed my eyes as the idea hit me. Okay, can’t go quiet anymore. Time to go loud.

I came up to the door, they were behind and slowly slid the door open just a crack.

It was a lounge room, food and a TV was set up, and everyone inside, all ten of them were relaxing and chatting. The main squad of the Wraiths. I scanned all of them, and held myself back from whistling. Most of them were just minor bits and bobs of chrome, but their leader was a borg. A real tough looking guy. Not Maine’s level, but someone that would give Jun a run for his money.

Okay, time to prep. I started breaching into each and every one of them, being extra careful with the leader. While I did that, my hands worked the grenade I kept attached to my belt free.

It wouldn’t be enough, on its own, but with a bit of extra netrunning havoc, I think I could do this.

I nodded as I breached into the last gonk. All of them had their defenses punched right through. It was time. I slammed Reboot Optics into their system. Only one of the gonks noticed something was wrong, as I saw a guy looking like a netrunner himself sit up as the hack was uploaded.

I opened the door, popped the pin on my grenade and chucked it right at him.

The tableau of frozen horror that I earned as they realized what was happening was perfect, as their sight was then instantly taken from them. I drew both my Lexington and my Burya, as their sight vanished, as they all started moving to try and grab a weapon.

Then the first round of my Burya roared out, right at the borg leader.

Something went wrong. Between one moment and the next he had disappeared. Sandevistan!

But that wasn’t all.

I had gotten a look at him face to face, eye to eye.

Only one of the man's eyes was cyberware…

I instantly backtracked. Knowing what was coming leaping out the other way of the door, suddenly a gun started firing and the doorway I had been in was filled with shrapnel. More than a few fragments struck me, but nothing that got through my armor and subdermal. I started running.

The grenade made an echoing boom behind me, but I just booked it. This hallway was not a good place to stand around in, even with blinded gonks.

The walls were too thin and I really didn’t want to get randomly shot. Plus A Sandevistan borg was too much to face head on. Had to get better terrain.

If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Then I heard it. Boots on the floor running, and focused.

Sandevistan Borg was chasing just as I expected.

I kept running, leaping over cars, or sliding on top of their hoods to get to the other side, then gun fire roared behind me, and I winced as I felt something slam into my back.

I fell into a roll ignoring the burning in my back. I had my Kang Tao armor, my leotard and my subdermal stopping whatever just hit me, but it still hurt.

I let myself roll forward and then once I had my feet there I leapt again. Pushing myself far down the mine shaft giving myself a chance to respond. The distance was everything I needed. I turned around.

He moved fast, but he wasn't David Martinez. He blurred as he zipped down the hallway, the noise of his movement coming in short bursts as he moved like a lot of low level Sandevistan users I’ve noticed. There was this stop and go to their movement, as if they needed to regain their grip on the ground before being able to push forward again.

It didn’t matter though. He was in my sight and his security was already in tatters.

“Get back here you netrunning bitch!” His voice roared, and I just rolled my eyes. Man, did these guys never get any better dialogue? It was always, Fuck you, or bitch this.

I uploaded my newest hack.

Short Circuit activated, there was an instant crackle of electricity as the borg dropped out of his hyper speed, lightning ran over his body as his batteries began an emergency discharge, but at the speed he was moving?

I smiled in enjoyment as the Sandevistan user went from charging at me, a very dangerous prospect to slamming face first into the concrete and sliding along leaving a trail of red in his wake as he became a meatmarker.

“Got you” I told him, as I raised my Burya and fired. His head disappeared in a splatter, and I just sighed and stretched, before refocusing. Reloading the Burya I hurried back to the room.

Some of the wraiths might still be alive. I led with my Lexington as I entered the hub and as I crept closer, I heard moaning mixed with calls for help, and even a few angry yells.

As I peaked in I relaxed. My grenade had done some serious damage. Outright killing the netrunner, and another gonk, while leaving the rest of them in no shape to do much. Especially since they were still blind.

I started lining up shots and firing as I stepped in. None of them were capable of stopping me, as the remaining wraiths freaked out at their own incoming silent demise.

Only once it was done did I truly relax, pinging the network again just to confirm there was no one else connected.

I pulled up a chair that was mostly intact from the table and plopped down, wincing a bit as my back touched the chair.

I sighed.

*Alright chooms. Place is clear. Not our target. Go ahead and get here to start looting, and inform Dakota we got some vehicles for her.*

Then I just relaxed for a bit, looking at my system.

*1000 XP Gained.*

*500 XP Gained.*

*1000 XP Gained.*

*500 XP Gained.*

*500 XP Gained.*

*500 XP Gained.*

*500 XP Gained.*

*500 XP Gained.*

*500 XP Gained.*

*500 XP Gained.*

6000 XP just for that room. Nice. Very nice.

I did get an alert as well, and it was one I hadn’t seen in a while.

*Quick Hacks skill level up!*

Quick Hacks 8. The lowest of my netrunning skill. I closed my eyes as I took in the knowledge about how to upload hacks just a bit faster, a bit sneakier.

—--

I eventually got moving again after I gave myself a break. I needed to search every inch of this place for traps so my chooms wouldn’t accidentally step into something. Thankfully it looks like their only security had been outside the mine. It wasn’t like much could get down here without going through the entrance after all.

But while doing that, I did find something else interesting. Laptops.

Not just the big one in the netrunners cave. No, there were personal computers all over the place. I found the leaders room, and he had a laptop as well.

Now I wasn’t expecting a convenient shard laying around telling me this guy's life story and how he was a bad person, but Wraiths were a gang. They were Raffen Shiv joined together, sure I highly doubted they got along group to group, but that doesn’t mean there wasn’t some communication.

So I pulled up his laptop, didn’t even need to unlock it as it was already unlocked. Then I pulled up his emails.

I ran back the list of emails to the day the transport was broken, and started checking.

No. No. No. Gross. No. Hmm. That was interesting, and might be something Dakota had an interest in. No. HELL NO.

“Ugh. Gross!” I whinged quickly closing that particular email. Long distance relationships were still a thing I guess, and for a guy stuck out in the badlands I guess he still wanted to get along with his girlfriend… And I now knew what a Mr. Studd looked like.

Yuck.

More and more I went through them, learning more about Terry ‘Terror’ Hamilton. The Wraith I had flatlined.

And then there it was. Three days after the hijacking. An email complaining to a guy about how he was pissed that “Issac” had hit the Arasaka AV. That he could have done it just as well, if he had known.

So he couldn’t have done it basically, but it was exactly what I needed.

I had a name now. Isaac.

I continued to search through the laptop, checking if there was any more information on Isaac, but didn’t find anything, but that was fine. We had the Badlands Fixer working with us. An Isaac of the Wraiths that had enough power to take out an Arasaka AV?

That should narrow it down.

—--

Malcolm let out a low whistle as he looked over the place. “That’s a lot of stuff we can grab.”

“We have extra vehicles we can commandeer as well, if the van isn’t enough.” Ichi answered, I was showing the two boys the rooms inside the mining hab, including the Netrunners setup.

“Well we will have to. A lot of this stuff is expensive.” Malcolm added, having been checking out the rooms.

“Well find out what the most expensive stuff is, or at least the stuff we can sell, run it past Hiromi and stuff.” I added and then mostly just stepped away from it.

Hiromi had been very firm that I should stay away from anything to do with eddies as my sense of money was ‘off’ in her words.

I grumbled but walked away, to meet Hiromi who was in the garage alongside Dakota’s handler for this.

The nomad was going over vehicles while Hiromi watched on with a smirk. I could practically see the eddies in her eyes.

Good, she would make sure we get a big paycheck, but I wanted to know where our next target was.

“Hiromi. Get anything on Isaac?” I asked her quietly as I walked up beside her, and she looked away to send me a confident nod.

“Yeah, Dakota knew exactly who it was.” She replied, her eyes flashing, as she sent me a text. The information Dakota had sent reached my eyes and I looked it over.

Dakota hadn’t considered Isaac to be a potential target for the raid. Although reading through the information she had on him, I instantly suspected she had purposefully chosen not to share that information with us so we might actually take out some of the troublesome Wraiths in the area.

It would be the exact sort of thing a Fixer like her would pull off. Only revealing the info if we hadn’t found it ourselves in the end.

For a price.

It doesn’t matter now. We had the name, and she gave us the location.

Issac Webb was a Wraith leader. The sort of crazy fuck that caused people to flock to him out of fear of being his next target.

He wasn’t super close to our current location, his outpost was well away from the city. But at least we had a location now.

I moved away from Hiromi so she could focus on her work and met back up with Malcolm and Ichi, helping the boys find the expensive stuff and load it up. We took a few hours clearing out the base to the best of our ability. Ichi proved his skill with power tools to completely disassemble anything of value that was bolted down.

We ended up taking two more vans from the Wraiths garage. Both were clunkers, but as long as they could get us out of the Badlands that was all we needed.

—--

Packing the two vans into a garage that Dakota was renting us, we all met up to take care of the next part of the gig.

“This is going to be difficult.” I said looking over the data that Dakota had on Isaac’s wraith group.

For the last eight months Isaac had grown very large, pulling in small Wraith groups from all over. Not even Dakota knew why, after all, the larger the group the more costly it was to keep them. More food, more CHOOH2 to fuel their vehicles which only drained more and more as more nomads grouped up. It’s why most Wraith groups were small. A dozen people or so max, to keep everything moving quickly. They were nomads after all, staying put was against their usual MO.

But Isaac had stayed put, and grown large. According to Dakota’s information, it wasn’t the first time someone had done that, sometimes men wanted to be kings of their little groups, and would grow too large, usually bloating up until the food and eddies ran out, and then they would shatter apart.

Isaac hadn’t hit that part, and with the Arasaka raid likely wouldn’t for a while, especially if he was selling off the equipment, or got paid by someone to do the raid in the first place.

So he was trouble.

Worse? The place he was hanging out in was just an old electrical substation. An old building probably put up in the 1980’s from how old it looked.

Yet, they were gathering around it. Flocking to it.

Luckily Dakota had been interested in what was going on, and we had some footage of the place from miles away. It was a month old, but at least it would give us an idea of what we were looking at.

We were all hunched over the display that we had set up in the back of Ichi’s van. We had emptied it out after arriving at the garage Dakota was renting us and we had spent the evening preparing for the next raid. The other two vans still packed full of goodies to sell. Hiromi had even sold some of it to Dakota directly earlier.

Now we were settled in and studying. All four of us were camped out. Planning on sleeping in the van, for the night and maybe hit the place in the morning once we had a plan.

Unfortunately it wasn’t going super well.

Isaac had a netrunner, a good one, which of course he did. He also had a lot of weapons, and a lot of people to use them. He was becoming a growing terror in the Badlands, and having so many wraiths was a daunting prospect.

If I had a workable tactical advantage, maybe, but with a netrunner working with him, I wouldn’t be able to do much without killing the runner first.

“Maybe a distraction, the Nomads?” Malcolm offered and I shook my head.

“Dakota, and the Aldecaldos are not going to get involved any further. Period.” Dakota had been completely firm. As far as the nomads were concerned, this was my problem.

None of them wanted the heat of getting involved.

“And using you guys as a distraction defeats the purpose of a stealth mission.” I did consider calling in help. I had an array of contacts by now outside of this. Panam, Jun, Jackie, V, Maines crew even.

Yet I hesitated. I wasn’t really the kind of person to be blinded by pride, but… This was my gig. My chance for XP, one that would really help boost me up.

There would be at least fifty people to flatline. If I could get them all? That was a lot of XP.

I took a deep breath. I didn’t need help on this, I just needed to put enough advantages in my corner.

“I’ll need to sneak in. The place isn’t exactly securely set up. Plenty of places to slip in through the desert. It’ll be a long walk, and I’ll need to watch for mines, but I can get there. The problem is inside. The substation is ancient. No idea where anything will be… But once the netrunner is down, I’ll have access to their system. I can upload some hacks to the entire network from there.” Short Circuit was going to get a lot of work on the assault I knew.

“But, can you even reach the netrunner? Obviously he is going to be somewhere secure.” Hiromi added looking over the digital map, and all I could do was nod.

If there was a netrunner controlling the system, I wouldn’t even be able to risk turning off the cameras. I would have to do a complete stealth OP.

I shook it off. “We only really have one choice. I need to do an actual scouting mission on the place.” I said, Dakota’s data was good, but it wasn’t entirely current, and I needed to get my eyes on the substation. I might see something that Dakota’s data missed. An entrance, or a weak point. Even a window left open to keep cool could be the difference between success and failure. More importantly. I needed to find the netrunner without even touching the net.

Sure, I might be able to get in, but I might also alert the runner if he was good enough, and I just didn’t know. So I was treating him as monstrously skilled. I needed to find and kill him before anything else.

In the end nothing concrete was hammered out. We discussed entry points, and numbers but I would need to scout the place to learn more.

We all went to bed in the back of Ichi’s truck that night mentally preparing for tomorrow.