Nicolai crept up the ladder, the other two following after him. He was almost at the top, close enough that his Soul Sense was able to push up and slip around the tarp and check the area. Nothing in the bush, but the gunshots continued, steady rapping sounds, occasional bursts and booms.
He slid the tarp aside and poked his head out, checking around. All clear, excepting the sound of gunshots coming from one side. He emerged slowly and quietly, poncho open at the front, MP5 at the ready, safety off. A drone hummed out from the ladder hole and into the air, piloted by Threat Analysis. It rose into the sky, giving him a view of the area around, then rapidly retreated back down upon spotting other drones hovering some distance away, above a clearing in the direction of the gunshots.
Jo and then Beth emerged from the ladder-hole. They, like him, now wore black balaclavas and looked entirely up to no good. If they ended up interacting with others he wanted to hide their identities as much as possible, for a multitude of reasons. He also wore new clothes, techno-camouflage protective wear with reinforcement on his knees, elbows, shins, forearms, as well as lightweight cut-and-stab protection over his vitals.
‘Let’s go,’ he said to the girls once they’d emerged. ‘Cut yourselves from the Local then follow me in a line, and move as quiet as you can.’
Cutting Local was a standard move for people in situations like this. If you didn’t cut off your receptive broadcast-state, you would easily be detected by others.
His own Link was also hidden, but not in quite the same way. Cyberwarfare was using a ghost technique to continue scanning and observing the Local while avoiding detection. When initially asked to do so it had complained endlessly about his lack of proper cyberwarfare implants.
The Modules had only grudgingly agreed to help, as neither had finished fully setting themselves up and had been forced to pull their attention from doing so. They were quiet as a result, attention split two ways. Regardless, even giving only half their attention, they would give him a some notable benefits. Without them, he’d have had to either spare personal attention towards managing the cyberwarfare aspect and drones, that or rely on some basic software.
He didn’t give the girls time to get nervy, moving straight out through the bushes after giving his orders. The gunshots meant guns. Guns, and whatever else the shooters had on them, were worth taking. This was an opportunity.
They filtered through the undergrowth and between the trees, creeping towards the sounds of violence, the volume of the gunshots growing.
‘Wait,’ he hissed, pausing behind a tree.
He could see someone, hiding behind their own tree some distance away, peering out from behind and firing at some distant target. His eyes moved and spotted another. One of the pair scrambled out from behind the tree, charging forwards. Rattle of gunfire. They’d shot someone. Then the other was emerging, too, both of them moving forward warily. Wary, but not overmuch. It looked like they’d won their fight.
‘Let’s go,’ he said, the ember that was the thrill beginning to burn in his chest, and slipped after the targets.
The two armed individuals moved into the clearing, and he saw them looking down at someone who raised a hand, begging. One of them angled a pistol and shot, and the hand fell. Then they started talking, gesturing, looking about.
Nicolai already knew he was going to kill them. Perhaps when he’d first arrived in this new world he might have thought different, his attempts to be more human, more normal, pushing him in that direction. But the atmosphere of the castle had changed, now. From uncertainty and confusion to a much more simple schema.
The castle was a war-zone, and Nicolai knew exactly how to behave. His Mask wasn’t so sure, but his justifications were enough to keep it down.
They needed to do this quick. Those enemy drones were about, searching for third parties like him and the girls. Cyberwarfare had fixed on the locations of some and they weren’t far, performing sweeps in the area around the enemy. Fortunately, the dense foliage above forced these drones to simply circle the area beneath the treeline, where visibility was limited, but the longer they waited around the more likely one would come by and see them.
‘You’re going to shoot one of them,’ he told Jo. She looked to him, chewing at her lip. She didn’t seem happy about the order, but he didn’t think she was overly bothered, either. He knew she had quite some experience with shooting unaware people.
‘The one on the left. See him? With the beard. You shoot him in the back. Got it?’
She nodded. ‘I got it.’
‘Beth will tell you when.’ He looked to Beth. ‘I’ll communicate the timing with you via Soul Sense.’
Nicolai activated his poncho, finding it had less than fifteen-percent charge remaining. That was plenty. He crept out, the MP5’s barrel emerging from beneath it as he got into position. He took aim down the iron-sights, bringing the centre-mass of the one on the right into focus.
With his Soul Sense, still just in contact with Beth’s, he sent a pulse. Now.
A moment later there came a bang, and he squeezed the trigger.
The one on the left fell immediately, the other danced as three bullets caught him in the upper-back then he, too, fell.
Cyberwarfare surged out, grappling with the two enemy drones which had lost their masters, and it quickly seized control then passed that control to Threat Analysis who set them to work in patrol sweeps. Full of eagerness, Cyberwarfare went and took control of Jo’s drone too, snatching it from her before she could react. She sent him some irritated words over Local in response, saying if he wanted to control the drone he only had to ask.
The four drones now under Threat Analysis’s control began a circle of the area, keeping a look out for more arrivals. Nicolai didn’t want to see a repeat of what had just happened, only with him being the one shot in the back. With four drones, and Threat Analysis’s skilful direction, they had good coverage and he figured they were safer than the two men had been.
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‘Come on,’ he called out to Jo and Beth, rising and heading into the clearing, deactivating his poncho.
There were about a dozen corpses strewn about. A quick glance revealed only four of them had guns, the rest armed only with standard fare taken from the undead.
Jo and Beth caught up with him, looking wide eyed and worried, peering about into the brush.
‘Take anything of use,’ he said simply, and put his words into action as he seized a gun from one of the dead, slinging it over his shoulder, then he kicked the man over and rifled through his pockets before rising and heading to the next.
He was carrying a good little haul when he arrived by a corpse only to see it groan and turn over, looking up at him. Not a corpse, then. Not yet, anyway. A young man with a sword beside him and ragged clothes, part of the group which had been shot up. He had pulled his rags up, revealing a little bleeding hole in his stomach.
‘Hello,’ said Nicolai, crafting a friendly smile and hunkering down beside the man.
‘I-I-I’m dying,’ gurgled the man.
‘You’re not that bad,’ said Nicolai, looking him over critically. ‘Stomach wound. It’ll take a while to kill you.’
‘Hurts,’ said the young man. ‘Help me. Please.’
‘They do tend to hurt,’ Nicolai admitted. He made a show of chewing at his lip, uncertain. ‘I don’t have any medical supplies. How about I take you back to the rest of your friends? Unless this is everyone?’
The man’s eyes lit up. ‘Yes, p-please! We have orbs. I’ll—I’ll owe you.’
‘Who are you with?’
‘New Start Communists, we call—‘ he let out a pained, hacking cough, ‘—call ourselves. Alisa is our leader. We’re… that way, behind the towers.’ He pointed weakly.
‘Show me your map, I’ll see if I can get you there.’
‘Thank you,’ said the man, tapping his Mark. ‘Here, over there.’
Nicolai took careful note of the location. ‘Your group need guns?’ he asked.
‘Wha—? Yeah, everyone needs guns.’
Nicolai smiled. He heard footsteps behind, and his Soul Sense detected Beth and Jo approaching. He felt them pause behind him, looking over his shoulders.
‘I guess you’ve got lots of supplies at your base, Oma crystals and points-tags and such, right?’ Nicolai continued.
The young man was frowning at him, then up at the girls clad in their black masks. ‘Are you gonna take me back?’ he asked. ‘Please take me back.’
‘’Course I am,’ Nicolai assured him. ‘What was this little scuffle about?’
The man scowled. ‘Chosen. We tried to ambush them. But… they aren’t like normal. Normally, they don’t shoot first. They try to capture you. But this time…’ The young man shook his head, clenched his teeth, let out a gasp of pain and then took a few heavy breaths. ‘We acted like we wanted to talk. But this time, I don’t know. They just started shooting soon as they saw us.’
‘Good effort,’ Nicolai nodded to the man. Sounds like the Chosen’s combat doctrine has changed. Brave of this bunch, he reflected, to go against people with guns and drones with nothing but swords and bows. They’d even managed to kill two of the Chosen. He’d come a little closer, now, crouching beside the man, and his hand had slipped out behind the man’s head. His Mask began to squirm, and he felt it digging into his Soul, into his face. There was a dull pulse of… something. Sadness? Regret?
Nicolai didn’t let the emotions stop him doing what he needed to do.
‘Yeah, I—‘ There was a faint snick then the man let out a slow breath and his eyes crossed. Nicolai carefully lowered his head to the ground then tugged the hand-talon out of the side of his skull. He cleaned the blood off on the grass then opened his fist. The blade retracted back into his hand with a snap.
‘What!?’ The words were an explosion from behind him. Beth. ‘Why did you do that?’
‘You got everything of use from the dead?’ he asked.
‘Why did you kill him!’ she yelled, her voice echoing through the trees.
‘Shhhh,’ he gathered his loot and rose to his feet, putting a finger to his lips as he met her shocked and furious eyes. ‘Not too loud. Let’s go, back to the Trade Link. Need to be gone before others arrive.’
The pair of them stood there, staring at him. He couldn’t see much of their faces with the balaclavas covering them, but with his Soul Sense he read things well enough. Jo was worried, though she at least kept her silence. As to Beth, he didn’t need his Soul Sense to know how she felt.
‘Did you get everything of use?’ he repeated, and received a nod from Jo. ‘Good work,’ he told her, then stepped past them and led on.
‘Why did you kill him!’ Beth hissed as she followed.
Nicolai debated for a moment whether to explain his reasoning. He thought it possible she wouldn’t care why he’d done it, but decided he ought to explain just in case she did. Explaining might also help calm his Mask down, as it was also quite upset, though to his surprise this effected him less than he’d suspected.
It was easy to brush aside his Mask’s feelings. He was getting better at doing so, when he figured they were particularly pointless. The Modules, at least, had no issues. They entirely understood why he’d killed the man, who they estimated would have little if any insurance pay out. They still hadn’t quite adjusted to that not being a factor, in this new world.
Once they were out of the open area and back in the treeline, the drones flanking and circling, he figured they were safe enough and began to speak.
‘We are soon going to be making heavy use of the Trade Link,’ he said, looking back at the sisters. ‘It is our greatest asset. Everyone needs guns, right? And everyone has points-tags, which they are unable to spend. We can provide guns, and other things, for points-tags.’ He smiled. ‘At a very competitive rate.’ He intended to charge at least double what any given item was worth. This would lead to a form of exponential growth; each trade would allow him to buy twice as much, which would double in value again when traded for more tags.
‘What does that have to do with killing him, he was harmless, he was dying,’ Beth rejoined.
‘Their fight was too close to the Trade Link. I intend to trade with his friends, these Communists. We cannot be seen in this area; cannot be seen near to the Trade Link. He saw us. He’d remember that he saw us and where he saw us. Hard to forget a place where so many comrades died. That might be fine, for a while. But what if someone else sees us here, unavoidably? Once we start trading, people are going to very interested in finding out where the Trade Link we use is. They’ll start to connect any dots they can find. Dots like us being seen here.’
‘Isn’t that what the masks were for?’ said Jo, finally broaching her silence.
‘They’re not foolproof, just a manner to slow down any attempt to identify us. We have other identifiable features. Our clothes, our weapons, our voices. Mannerisms, body shape, height, weight, and so on. No doubt he was recording everything with his BIS’s eye-lenses, right?’ He sighed, and twisted his features into one of regret, drawing on his Mask. It was awash with actual regret, which made his act especially convincing. Doing so, feeling what it felt, he started to think that he did feel regret.
‘It’s a shame.’ It was a shame. ‘But he had to die.’ Undeniable. His logic was sound. Threat Analysis chimed in to agree with him, saying the man had been a valid target due to the risk he had posed to their mission. It, and Cyberwarfare, were both somewhat aware of the Mask. They could not directly interact with it, because they had no connection to his Soul, but they could see the thoughts and responses it stirred within him. He felt a great deal of curiosity from them towards the Mask, which eyed its own vague impression of them with a kind of hesitant amiability.
He pressed into the bush, the other two following, and soon they all stood above the ladder.
‘After you.’ He gestured the pair towards the hole. The three of them had much to do, and he wanted to get started. His Mask was still upset and he spent a moment working to calm it as the girls climbed down, ignoring Beth’s glare. The Mask was whispering to him about being a better man, but he told it that there was a difference between being a better man and being a fool.
The Mask was not convinced, but Nicolai wasn’t bothered. That was its job, to think the weird and sometimes interesting things humans thought, and it was his job to decide whether those thoughts were reasonable. He slipped into the ladder-hole and tugged the tarp back over.