“It’s not a decision that needs to be made now Mal. We can discuss it more when the jobs are finished and it becomes more relevant.” Marchand said with a puff of smoke.
“Run me through your set up again before we move on, so I don’t go stressing about this choice and turn out wrong later. You’ve used low level, mid level and high level operators and now theres a right hand apparently. Is there a left hand?” I said, wanting to clear up the details before we talked about jobs.
“Low level operators are newer, untrusted agents that are loosely connected to me, usually young or even children as most of my operators are. I made that choice a long time ago and have seen both its benefits and it’s curses. Middle level operators are those who I have some trust in, they get more dangerous and complicated jobs from my that have actual ramification for the city or myself if they are failed badly.” Marchand said, holding up a finger, then another, then another. “High level operators are often not tied exclusively to me anymore, they have long since earned their power and prestige and often have their own networks and positions of authority and only rely on me for connections and information and in exchange I rely on them for the most important work to be done and their network.”
“So low levels run around doing the throw away jobs that are just for making cash, mid levels are for the important jobs that actually gain you things, high levels are people so far along they are doing their own thing and… stuff? Not really sure about that last one. What about this right hand thing? Is that like your butlers?”
“Butlers? Oh, my household staff? Mal. My right hand is my most trusted operator and I have had five right hands in the past, the last dying about eleven years ago and I’ve just made do without one since then. My right hands are basically trained by me from a young age, I invest in them however much I can and then they carry out whatever work that needs doing that I think they are able to do.
My last right hand was a young Mexico-born girl from a family of nomads, one of the more militant salvager clans who were around the city for a few months, with her specialties being transport, piloting and a wide range of combat making her an excellent operator by the time she became an adult.”
“She sounds nova. What happened to her though?”
“Yola died in low orbit during a particularly dangerous job that got her caught between two corporate interests during on of their quiet wars. She did her best on the job despite my misgivings and refused extraction, when it came down to the wire she at least went out killing her killers as any of use could hope to do. Scattering herself and two squadrons of orbital strike fighters across the atmosphere.” Marchand took a long moment to herself as she took a drag from her cig before speaking again. “Her predecessor at least died of old age and was one of my longest serving right hands and a dear friend of mine, his name was Alexander and he was more of a face than anything else. Although in his younger years he did get up to a lot of mischief as an assassin and then a fence before settling into a role more as my representative. Many from that time even believed that I didn’t exist or was simply an insane old woman and he was using my prestige and name to do business, it was when I took on this current persona I like to use now, the theatrics remind me of Alexander and the way he would laugh.”
“That life doesn’t sound so bad. Can a right hand ever… I suppose quit would be the word? Or retire?” I asked, trying to find the right words.
“Not really, you’d be too involved in most of the enterprise and the fallout of most of the operations that actually untangling yourself from the whole business would take so much money and effort while still not ensuring the safety of everyone attached that it would just be impossible. At the same time I’m hardly a slave driver, if you needed a break, recovery or grew too old then I’d just assign you less tasks or change your role. My network is robust enough to survive without a single high level operative, I’ve not had a right hand for many years and not missed out on too many opportunities.”
“I’ll consider it I guess. It doesn’t sound so bad from the outside. How do you even live so long Marchand? You make it sound like you’ve been alive forever.”
“That’s hardly a forbidden magic Mal, it’s mostly cyberware for preservation and rare trips to a transneptunian clinic station for some of their more advanced rejuvenation treatments to keep my brain in top condition. The treatment is literally free as nothing you could bring would have value to them out there. You just have to have the millions of credits needed to be able to make it there and back, it’s a lot of delta v after all. I’ve been a brain in a chrome body for nearly… oh my, a hundred and thirty years now. Even before that I wore a lot of chrome. But enough embarrassing an old woman with her age, let’s talk about your next job.”
“Alright, I guess.” I said, a little weirded out. She was so normal about being over a hundred years old, like a lot more than a hundred years old.
“You’ll remember that your first job was escorting a team of operators through the green viaducts? You’ll be doing a similar job, but from a different perspective. This time you’ll be following the guide operator and the team he is escorting but from the net. You’ll be preventing security from logging them, managing camera records, disabling maintenance locks and bypassing identity checks as they move. You’ll need to find a location to set up and operate from and then create your own probe network down to the green viaduct and bridge the two grids that are relevant without being discovered by the local junction team for the duration of the mission.” Marchand said, seeming re-energized by getting to business talk.
“That sounds pretty exciting, when does it begin?” I asked, sitting up and leaning forward.
“It’s incredibly boring for a seasoned netrunner, it’s just babysitting. But for you and other newbies I guess it would be a bit of a fun job. Lots of varied challenges but nothing high risk unless you get totally caught out by the junction team and that’s not likely, they have bigger priorities to dedicate effective resources to than catching a newbie netrunner.” She said, leaning back. “The job will be in nine days, it was one of jobs with no real date but it got moved up when they went through a team reshuffle. I was going to throw it to another fixer but then you woke up, so here we are. You’ll need a day or two for setup though.”
If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.
Sanctum, will I be up and around enough for wandering around the upper maintenance tunnels in a week?
[More of your recovery can be prioritized around movement ability and stamina, but you will need more sleep to do so without affecting your growth and overall health.]
“Sa… Sam says I’ll need a few early nights but I’ll be ready time to to set up and get the job done. What does the pay look like?” I said confidently.
“Eight hundred as soon as they reach their destination, you can either collect your tools right away or later, or just scuttle them. I’d advise you get used to scuttling them, it’s a great way to reduce risk.” Marchand said shaking her head at the idea of recollecting the tools.
“I’ll likely go through a lot of early designs for my kit, so saving them when they’ll likely be trash this early in my career is gonk anyway. I need to figure out when I need to build first, does the documentation you sent before explain what I’ll need?”
“You’ll want to check chapter three, fourteen and fifteen. You’ll also want to get your hands on a printer and some raw supplies, no doubt Noe or her mother when she reappears can help you source some good ones. It would be interesting to see if Sanctum can aid you in your designs.”
“Well it did fill in some engineering gaps, let hope it can help with… What would it be? Optics? Laser dynamics? No doubt I’ll find out when I start working on the equipment.”
“I think that gives us a good working order between use for now, hopefully we can put the unpleasantness behind us now. I do thank you for shaking loose some of my cobwebs in that regard and really do advise you to kill any opponent you manage to render prone and defenseless when they have made a clear effort to kill you.”
“I don’t think we’ll run into the same issue Anna, but if we do I guess I’ll keep that in mind. Or at the very least I’ll consider it with enemies.” I said, leaning away a little.
“Let’s hope you do, kill shots are common practice among operators. All young operators learn to silence first their sympathy, then their mercy. You’ve already put down that first tool before we first spoke, I do hope you retire the second soon for your own sake. You’re free of me now in any case, consider us returned to a normal and friendly state of operation and if you do notice signs of observation you can feel relaxed for now, that observation is also keeping others from observing you even as they relay any unusual or dangerous elements of your friend to me personally.” Marchand said before turning off her cig and placing it on it’s stand.
“Can I see your eyes again before I go? The brown ones. I saw them when it was all crazy.” I said as I got to my feet.
“I’d have to go and find the originals in some biological waste bin in the south if you want to see those. But I’m assuming you mean my current eyes, or the one anyway after I had to swap out the other you skewered. Here.” She said with a smirk as her eyes flickered white for a moment and then appeared dark brown with quite light iris near the pupil. “A setting made just like mine when they were still flesh, sentimental for one such as I but you get like that as you get older.”
“Thank you Anna, and overall I’m sorry. Sam is too important to be abandoned and I won’t surrender my life. So we’re left with this. I was honestly expecting this meeting to be you either killing me or sending me away.” I said, standing there as tall as she was sitting.
“So serious for one so young, it’s not as bad as you think Mal. As an operator you need to learn to be more flexible with your relationships, a friend one day is an enemy the next. A betrayal can mean everything the first time and nothing the second time, or laughable the third. You’ll soon learn that staying happy can mostly come down to how you deal with people in the moment rather than trying to make them stay in certain categories. I considered you a valuable agent on the rise at a time I need new talent, then I considered you a threat both personal and professional, now I consider you a dangerous but very valuable agent on the rise at a time I need new talent. I have adjusted accordingly, you do yourself a disservice if you don’t follow suit.”
“That sounds really tiring. I’ll try though, see you soon Anna.” I said as I left the parlor and walked through the apartments and into the hallway.
When I was out I wanted to just sit on the floor and relax, I’d been very tense throughout and trying to keep it hidden. Now it was done with and I’d gotten what I wanted but it left me feeling really strung out.
[User is advised to seek a comfortable place to cease movement so the body can recover from over-stimulation. Sanctum can only maintain safe levels of manual stimulation for another hour before causing tissue damage.]
Right, of course. Sorry Sanctum. I’d forgotten you were puppeting me around because of my burnt out whatevers. Synapses? Cell somethings or others? Some sort of chemical over-exposure?
[Many of your cells were essentially rendered numb to a variety of important neurotransmission chemicals from extreme overexposure and force rapid adaptation. The worst affected being your myoneural junctions which were essentially non-functional throughout your body as you couldn’t produce a large enough acetylcholine to stimulate the sarcolemma of your muscle fibers leading to cardiac arrest and paralysis among other not immediately life threatening issues.]
So I’m still learning to move my muscles around, got it. I’ll go check on mom and sit down for a few hours then. Will it hurt when you let go of me?
[It shouldn’t be painful, but you will return to baseline function quickly which will feel very weak in comparison and it is suggested to let it heal naturally for the remainder of the day at least.]
I headed across to my apartment door and realized I didn’t have my key shard on me, so I just buzzed. Mom quickly opened the door and saw it was me and basically grabbed me into a hug with a sob and buried her head in my neck.
“I’m happy to see you too mom, I’m sorry I put you through all this. I really am.” I said with what little air was left in me.
Mom pulled away and just looked at me as she seemed to be looking for harm.
“It’s fine Mal. It’s fine. I don’t care, I just love you so much. I don’t want you to have to hide things, but if you do I just want you to know I don’t care what it is. I’ll always love you regardless.” She said while wiping tears from her eyes and starting to smile.
“I know mom, I don’t like not telling you what’s going on. But it won’t change who I am, and I love you. So that’ll never change even if I have to do strange things sometimes to keep you safe.” I said trying to make mom feel better but not just paint over the issue, without lying to her.
She pulled me in and sat me on the sofa and she flicked the vid screen over to a movie, a period piece where some young noble girl had to do farm work or similar. Mom then came back over with a bowl of warm popcorn bits. Apparently it was just cornstarch runoff with a load of treated starch fibers baked into it that made it blow up the shell of cornstarch in a microwave. Not actual corn. Tasted good though.