I didn’t really know what to say to Lla after my last response, she’d just continued weeping into my mom’s shoulder while I was sat there across the room. I was almost glad to have a ping from my interface that I’d received a message from Marchand.
“Ah, I just got a message. Looks like my job is starting soon so I’ll head out for now. I’ll be back soon, tonight at least, tomorrow at most. It shouldn’t take much longer than that.” I said.
“You’re leaving right now? You offered me to stay here and then immediately leave?” Lla asked.
“Mom will be here, I’ll be back soon enough. It’s just a smaller job. Just take it easy, stay indoors so no one can track you easily, stay off the grid. You know, normal hiding protocols? If you need something from the grid either ask mom to pick it up and send it to you or you can ask my friend Noe or her mom if they come to visit. They live on the street too. Oh I forgot to say mom, Noe’s mom is back home.” I said, brushing myself down and checking my gear. I’d need to pack a few items to go.
“Oh that’s wonderful. It’ll be good to talk to Varia again. It’s been such a long time.” Mom said, still holding Lla even as Lla had pulled away a little.
I walked into my little storage room and packed some water and food to go, not much though with just enough for two days just in case. I packed a couple of the spare magazines and a few backup IR tripods.
As I got up from my little pile of stored stuff in the corner I turned around to see Lla walking into the room.
“Yeah, this’ll be your room for however long you’ll end up needing. There’s no bed in here right now but if you message Marchand, I’m sure that one of her staff will handle getting one up here. Apparently they handle most big furniture stuff for the apartments on the street, likely a security thing. In the mean time you can sleep on the sofa, or just rob the cushions from it into here if you want some more privacy.” I said, slotting things into my rig and pulling my jacket on over the whole thing.
“I’ve dealt with worse. Thanks for putting me up here for now. I still don’t know if I’ll still be here after tomorrow when I talk to Marchand again but I appreciate it.” She said with folded arms.
“You’re still talking to Marchand? Well, good luck with it I guess. Try to keep it business style if you want the best response, she opens up to that kind of thing better than pleading. Make her an offer for her help, kind of thing.”
“I don’t even know what I’d need to offer her. She seems to have a whole world here under her control.”
“That’s what she wants you to think. That’s part of the whole front. She does need things, maybe things you could offer her. Maybe try offering yourself first? Sign something to be her operator for a few years maybe, you’ve grown up around your brother doing the work but there’s more than shooting and running. There’s no doubt something there you could do right now that Marchand could use you for.”
“Offer myself? Do you think she’d save or just straight up kidnap my brother if I did that? That’d stop him from killing himself.”
“Uh. No, I don’t think that would work. Unless you have some hidden super valuable intelligence or some spacer tech of some sort put away for a rainy day I don’t think there’s much you can do to get Marchand to step into the ring on this. It would get you a future though, it’d get you a way to make money and keep going afterwards. Just trying to be pragmatic with what I know about and have access to recommend.”
“I see. Thank you Mal. I forgot to ask your name when I came in. I’m sorry about that, your mom told me both your names though. Like I said, I’m Lla Lal. My brother is Rivaan Lal. Lla Lal, I know. My father was a gonk in his own way.” She said, her sad and small smile shifting a little to an actual smile at the end.
“Nice to meet you Lla, I wish I could help out a bit more. Right now all I’m offering isn’t a whole lot but I don’t have much to me. Just hold some hope for your brother to get away from the mess, he might still cancel the whole thing yet. If it does all go down then at least you’re relatively safe here for now and you can find your feet afterwards.” I said, untangling a strap of my bag from one of my rig. “Mom will be around generally although she’s often on her incarna due to her brain stuff, incarnation burn and all that. She’s fine apart from sleeping a lot in the day.”
“I still find it odd that you’re helping me at all, but it’s appreciated.”
“It’s not that much help so it’s not really a burden, so I don’t really mind helping. If it was more of an effort or if you were dealing with this out of my sight I might not think much about it. But you’re right here, and you need help. I can offer a little help, so I will. No greater thing to it. Anyway, I need to head off. Keep yourself entertained but try to stay off the grid. I’ll see you later Lla.” I said, resetting my bag and heading out to the living room.
“You going now Mal?” Mom asked.
“Yeah, going now. I’ll be back in a few hours or tomorrow. No major issues expected. See you soon mom.” I said, giving her a hug and heading out the front door.
I crossed the hallway to Marchand’s and found the front door already open, I remembered seeing Lla earlier close it clearly. So it must be open for me then. I headed in and walked through the long living room space full of knick knacks to Marchand’s parlor and knocked.
“Come in Mal.” Marchand’s voice rang out.
I went in holding my backpack secure on my shoulder and stood next to my usual chair, figuring I wouldn’t be here long. I received a IR ping and connected to Marchand, a bunch of documents, maps and details fore the job arriving on my interface.
“The job will be starting about four hours from now, I wanted to give you eight hours notice but things moved expectantly quickly this morning. They will be in position in roughly three hours depending on traffic on the surface, then they need to travel to the first contact point. You’ll need to be ready to go on the net at the four hour mark at the least. I assume you’ve set up somewhere secure you can get into the relevant grids already?” Marchand said, all business today.
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“Yep, got a tunnel already set up and two different points of access that are reasonable to use for this operation. Both have multiple escape routes and the primary point has a good amount of exterior security if need be.”
“Good. I’ll leave you to run along then. By the by, I did tell you to leave Lla alone did I not?”
“Uh, yeah you kind of did. But she was right there in the hallway, upset. I had to do something. I’ve not locked her into anything, she’s just not going to die at random while she’s here instead of wherever they live at the moment. That’s all I was thinking.”
“Childish altruism, you owe her nothing. But if you can keep her alive until she comes to her senses and signs up with me then I can at least protect her myself without tying up one of my operators. If she decides to return home instead then that’s the choice she has made, I’d not want to remove that from her. As for you, don’t tangle yourself in the local goings on lightly Mal, they can become larger problems even if you ignore the headaches it might cause me personally.”
“I’ll try to keep my meddling limited to my doorstep instead of the hallway in the future, I guess.”
“That would be preferred. If you can keep her alive until she’s made her choice I’ll make sure you are rewarded based on her decision. I won’t ask you to convince her to sign on with me but if she does I’ll gladly grant a remuneration to you.”
“That does sound like a bribe to convince her to me Anna, even if you claim otherwise. I’ll think about it during the job. I’m heading off now anyway, have to catch a train.”
“Goodbye Mal, good luck with your work. Say hello to your friend for me as well.” Marchand said as she waved me away.
I left the parlor without issue and headed out of the gate at the end of the hallway.
As I walked through the busy streets I noticed the tension around the place once I left the area around Marchand’s street. The more normal folk were quieter than usual and the ganger more heavily armed, along with the food carts being less spread out with their food layouts and they didn’t have their tables and chairs deployed. Like they wanted to be ready to grab their cart and pull out the area real quick.
Something was going on, something I hadn’t heard of. Not uncommon with my lack of friends but I usually caught rumors pretty quickly. I pulled my jacket closed and buttoned it a little to hide my gear a bit better and then split from the crowds to a side street that had a food cart selling hotdog strings, little shoelaces made of meat wrapped into thin protein rich skins that you could just bundle into whatever shape you wanted from the machine. Want a burger? Spiral it out. Want a hotdog? Back and forth. I leaned against the cart with my elbow and ordered a hotdog, the guy didn’t respond and just pressed a button on his little machine and I watched it shunt a bun from the little oven thing and then a hotdog string slowly dripped back and forth into the bun, quickly hardening into the less loose, more crunchy and meaty texture as it got exposed to the air.
“Anything going on today?” I asked quietly, still watching the machine work. Get right to the point is usually my motto unless I was actively trying to work someone over.
“Hm. You not heard? Big fight down in the pipe ways in one of the Gloomers warehouses. Lots of guns taken, like an army’s worth. About sixty dead from what I heard. Gloomers are down big numbers and on the warpath for finding out who made it happen, already seen fighting in the streets this morning.” The hotdog guy said, sniffing and looking through his cutlery draw nonchalantly.
“Fighting near here? Is Gloomers still run by Huds?” I asked, still keeping still.
“Not far, about three streets over north there was a big shootout this morning. Early hours. Not heard too much yet apart from six dead. Whole lot of injured civs though. Huds is still there, yeah.”
“Hm. Any ops wandering? Corps?”
“Not that I’ve heard. You never really see them though. Not until after.”
“Thanks for the hotdog.” I said, pinging his cart with thirty aura. “Keep the change.”
“Pleasure.” He said, closing his drawer and leaning back on his little stool.
The hotdog was quite nice although the guy really needed to clean the machine more, the skin was full of hard bits and it made the whole thing too salty. The sauce was mustard flavor but either I had lost the sense of taste at some point or the guy had just poured out yellow paint onto the string because it had no taste, just salt, meat and bun that had been cooked too long.
At least the information was okay at face value, it made sense and at least put my concern that whatever was going on wasn’t tied to my job today. It was just street politics in action. Shame about those civs in the firefight.
I quickly looked around and spotted a IR cluster at the other end of the street and walked away from the crowd until I had a clear line of sight and connected to the local grid. I left a quick message for mom to stay in the street today, gangers fighting. That done I turned around and headed to the subway.
The elevator was actually right there when I walked past it, so I stepped on with the others when the people inside got out. It was a little cramped but I guess the engineers knew people would cram in because the weight limit allowed for at least us lot, from what I could tell from a quick head count it being eighteen people in the long elevator.
I stepped out right into the subway and made my way to the platform, throwing away my cheap plastic hotdog sleeve into the overflowing trash on the way.
-
The train journey back to the same spot as before to get into the green viaducts was uneventful thankfully. I wanted to get on with the job and get some proper netrunning under my belt.
Apparently the city repair drones hadn’t got around to fixing the torn off digital lock on the security door so I got through the storage warehouse security checkpoint without issue. If only all Marchand’s jobs could be so simple.
One I was into the viaduct itself I did run into some unfortunate complications, there were a pair of wheeled maintenance drones. Usually city repair drones were heavy quadcopters with a utility and welding unit attached to the front but these drones were on wheels and were specific to the viaduct. They’d roll along the road-like tunnels and check the pipes for wear and damage while also keeping the place clean and collecting data to pass off to the checkpoints as they went along. Very standard closed system automation setup.
I was ducked around a fercrete doorway into the viaduct tunnels, the drones were just beyond cleaning up some sort of industrial mess, a lot of metal scraps and spelled effluence. Along with some broken valves and piping. Someone had either taken a heavy tool to the whole bundle of pipework on the wall down there or it was an actual pressure accident.
The drones were collecting the bits of metal on the floor with little tiny arms and placing them into a tray that pulled them into a little tube that led to a rubber bag thing on the side of it’s chassis.
Getting detected by these drones wouldn’t cause any sort of major alert but I didn’t want to be logged as being in the area, it might not mean much but it was better practice to not leave a trail and I had time to get this done properly even with some experimentation.