“How the hell did you get your hands on one of these?” I shouted over at Fidi. My voice juddered as the tires bounced over the blown-out pavement.
“Working for quarrymen has its perks,” he replied. “They’re almost tripping over these things out in the big pits.” He jerked the wheel to veer us around a pothole that could have competed with one of those strip mines. The Dienskat handled the swerve with aplomb. It was a smallish off-roader with four knobby tires, long-travel suspension, no doors and an open top. They weren’t armored, but had a reputation for being tough as nails and supremely capable. Fidi pulled out onto a more open stretch between the decrepit warehouses and stepped on it, the turbine engine shrieking.
I was both impressed and terrified by the speed. The lighting was very sparse out here and he had the headlights on their dimmest setting. The Pall was thick. Not even a hint of the sun’s dull crimson was visible. It was perfect weather for the sort of work we were about to do. Soon, he slowed down enough I could speak over the wind. “How much farther?” I asked him.
“Just a few minutes. Can you not smell it?”
On reflection, I could. The Sump’s aroma was a unique sort of rank: burning plastic, mildew, rotting garbage, and beneath it all the reek of sewage. “Should have brought a gas mask,” I muttered.
“You won’t notice it once we get to work. I never do.” He hit a toggle on the dash and the turbine’s whistle fell off. We were running on battery now, almost silent. “Are you ready?”
“Yeah.” I guess I didn’t sound too confident, for Fidi glanced over at me.
“Don’t worry. Follow my lead and don’t overthink things. Just like old times, ‘mana.” He grinned and I returned it, though I was still kind of worried. This job would take more finesse than any previous. I looked down at the weapon in my hands, trying to get familiar with its controls. Fidi’d given it to me in the old garage where I’d met him, pulling it out of the Dienskat’s bed. “Here you are. You’ll be on vehicle duty.” I took the gun, a bulky, blocky thing of black polymer and machined metal. The magazine was weird, running along the top of the barrel, and the bore was the size of my thumb.
“What is this thing, Fidi?” I’d asked, peering down the its holographic sight with a grin on my face.
“Assegai-23. It shoots these.” He tossed me a funny-looking round. It was near an inch across and mostly projectile, with a block of waxy propellant molded onto its base.
“A grenade launcher?” I was torn between excitement and apprehension. What did he expect to run into that we needed something like this?
“Of sorts. The shells are rocket-assisted. They keep accelerating for ten yards or so past the muzzle. Not the stealthiest weapon, but that ought to suit you fine, right?” He winked and I rolled my eyes. “Those are high-explosive incendiaries. Ought to be more than enough to stop any runners. You’ve got ten on the gun and four spare mags.”
“That should be just barely adequate,” I said dryly. He just laughed and showed me the Assegai’s controls.
“What are you going to do, then?” I asked when he was done.
“Snipe, of course.” He pulled a rifle out of the Serval and checked it over.
“Funny-looking gun.” Despite the big optic sitting on top the barrel was on the short side. A cylindrical housing stuck out on the bottom in lieu of a regular magazine.
“This is a VSK-13. Uses captive-piston ammo like that derringer of yours, just bigger. It’s almost silent.” I raised an eyebrow, impressed. “Rotary feed, too-it loads the empties back into mag. Leave no trace, compren? He smiled again, though it wasn’t a nice expression this time.
I made sure the Assegai was on safe and gingerly set it on the Dienskat’s tailgate. “Now, I appreciate the free gun and all, but what’s our actual plan?”
“Hm? Oh, we crash the meet and take whatever the Blues are handing off.”
“I mean how, dude. How exactly are we going to do that?”
He gave me an offhanded shrug. “We’ll find out when we get there. We didn’t find out the exact location until today. No time for recon, and we have no idea what kind of manpower will be there. So we play it by ear, huh? No big deal.”
“Right. Of course.”
“No need to sound so annoyed, Sawyer. If we get in a jam you can just cut us out.” He laughed, though I wasn’t seeing the humor. “I surely hope you didn’t choose that name for yourself.”
“Of course I didn’t! It was Walker, the bastard. I don’t even like it!”
“Oh, you shouldn’t have told me that.” He hopped into the Dienskat, putting his VSK into a gun bracket between the seats. “You ready to go?”
“No, but what does that matter?” I stowed the Assegai and got in beside him. The suspension creaked under my weight. He took us up a tightly spiralling ramp, out a half-rusted bay door, and here we were.
“Very close now,” Fidi muttered. He’d flipped the lights off completely now, and all his focus was out the windshield. I leaned forward, squinting, but I couldn’t make anything out. I wondered if he had bionic eyes. Once more I thought of how nice it would be to have some kind of night optics. They were so illegal that even the Holy Bones didn’t like to mess around with them.
A few more nerve-wracking minutes and Fidi parked the Dienskat in the lee of a half-burned building. It was only visible from the direction we’d arrived in, the remaining walls and upper floor concealing it otherwise. I noticed that he backed it in with the front pointing back the way we came.
“You expecting to leave in a hurry?” I asked, hopping down.
“Hope for the best, plan for the worst.” I remembered Northmarch saying much the same thing. “And yes, I think we’re going to be in a very great hurry.” He pulled a black balaclava over his head, becoming the tac-ninja I’d known as Monta once more. I felt pretty lame standing next to him in my jeans and Starmolten Vicissitudes album shirt.
We grabbed our guns and I checked over my gear. Slukh in my jacket pocket, coilgun and knife on my belt, and the Assegai slung over my shoulder-plus the saw in its harness, of course.
“All good?” asked Fidi. I nodded. “Alright. The spot is a few blocks west of here, just on the edge of the Sump. Let’s go see what we can see, eh?”
He led the way at a quick trot, staying close to the buildings. There must have been a pretty big fire here at some point. Every one of them showed damage. The owners had just left instead of paying for repairs. Fidi was a barely-visible shadow as he moved past their soot-blackened facades. His boots whispered over the crumbling sidewalk near-silently, and I did my best to mimic his movements. The air was too moist, rank with that distinct Sump smell.
After a few minutes a sudden light caught my eye. Fidi and I froze and got low at the same time. The light was a block or two ahead of us, bright white. At first I thought it was hanging in the air, but squinting at it revealed it was mounted on a mast. A construction light set, probably, shining down. I thought I heard its generator growling.
“I’m guessing that’s the spot,” I whispered.
He nodded. “Come this way.” He moved low and quick across the street. I followed him through the splintered door of what looked like a tenement building, now half-collapsed. Once inside he climbed carefully up a pile of rubble to peer out of an intact third-floor window. I followed as best I could, though he shot me a look when my foot dislodged a chunk of concrete. I couldn’t tell his expression behind the mask. It was disconcerting, reminding me that he wasn’t the same stringy kid I’d run with years ago.
I made it up without making any more noise, crawling through a scattering of trash and broken cutlery to join Fidi by the window. “Shouldn’t be too bad…” he muttered half to himself. I peered out over the sill and got my first look at the target. Spread out before us was an expanse of frost-heaved asphalt, likely an old parking lot. To its left was a half-collapsed warehouse, to its right a long, low building that might once have held stores or offices-and directly ahead, like a beach out of a fever nightmare, the asphalt subsided into the Sump.
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The lake-or marsh, or reservoir, or whatever you’d like to call it- had formed after the Guethon Canal’s caustic waters finally rotted through their levy and flooded the old Beloselo district thirty or so years ago. Sawada’d told me thousands died when it happened, and thousands more of disease and poisoning afterward. Now, the shantytown’s ruins lay beneath ten or more feet of contaminated water. Ruined buildings, snags of rusty metal, and even sections of the old floodwall poked above the surface, which swirled iridescent with pollutants. Some spots were covered with tarry black film so thick it was semisolid. Others glimmered with bioluminescent algae, glowing a dull, poisonous blue-green. Mutant insects skimmed and swarmed over the filth, and I hated to think of what else might be breeding down below. And the stink-Kings. Imagine a decomposing shank of meat, over-seasoned with mildew, marinated in a jus of sewage and industrial runoff and garnished with a hint of rotten garbage. Then imagine a smell so bad you’d rather deal with the above and you might barely approach the Sump’s fetor.
“Looks like the Fomorii aren’t here yet,” whispered Monta as he looked below through a blocky pair of hand optics. Indeed, the men and women standing in the harsh arc-light all had the look of Blue Division toughs: cheap suits, flashy jewelry, and a variety of weaponry-though they seemed to be bolted up with more bionics than usual. There were seven of them, standing around a pair of chunky Demaz SUVs, and every one seemed to have an eye or a limb replaced at minimum.
“Seem like they got a lot of chrome to you?” I asked in a low voice. He kept watching for a few seconds before he answered.
“Yes, but that’s to be expected. Barrikad wouldn’t bring bottom-scrapers.”
Now that I looked, it seemed he was right. The Blues down below were relaxed. Not that sort of aggressive nonchalance that a lot of streetcrawlers tried to affect, but the true calm of professionals. A pair of them held a quiet conversation by one of the SUVs, but the others were alert, hands on their weapons. “Which one is the big man?” I asked. None of them really stood out.
“I’ve never seen a good picture of his face, but I don’t think he’s any of them. Must still be in the truck.” He began to survey the warehouse and other buildings lining the lot.
“You know anything else about the guy? What’s his deal?”
He gave me a look over top of the optics before he answered; maybe I was bothering him. It was like he switched his personality off as soon as the op started. Made me feel like a bit of a deek in comparison, to be honest.
“He’s a hard case,” Fidi finally said. “He spent a while kicking doors for Rampart Collections before he came to our side of the fence. They call him Barrikad after the armor.”
“Ugh.” Everyone in D-Block knew ‘Battering Rampart.’ Their paramilitary repo men were contracted by shady payday lenders and rent-to-own outfits to collect on their investments. Their modus operandi was to kick in doors, knock the lendees around, and “repossess” anything that caught their eye, on the contract or not. To say they weren’t well-liked was an understatement, so they tended to be well-paid. “Why’d he drop a cushy ‘dench like that?”
“His ma and granddad were both Blue Division. Family business, you know.” He lowered the field glasses and slid below the windowsill. “And, rumor has it, Rampart bounced him out for violating their use of force policy one too many times.”
“Shit, they have one of those?”
“Right? So yes, he’s quite the nasty piece of work- but nobody gets to be second-in-command of Blue Division by being stupid. We need to be careful.”
I nodded. “What’s the plan now?”
He met my gaze, eyes dark and intense within his mask. “They’ve got two men on the top floor of the warehouse, watching the lot. I couldn’t see anyone in the offices but we ought to assume there’s people in there too.”
“Sounds like just charging in there’s not going to work.”
“No. We’ll wait until the Fomorii arrive. While everyone’s looking at them, we head into the warehouse and take out the sentries. Then, we use it as a vantage point to find out just what in the world they’re here to trade.”
I glanced up at the building’s corroded facade. “And what happens then?”
He gave an unassuming shrug, a bit of the old Fidi leaking through. “Again, we play it by ear.”
“I can see why you and Walker work so well together.”
“I…am not quite sure how to take that. But it all sounds good to you?”
It was my turn to shrug. “Sure, man. Shit. I’m not really all…tactical or whatever. I just-“
“Cut people up?” I could tell he was smiling under the balaclava.
I didn’t really like thinking about it too hard, but he was’t wrong. “Well, when you put it that way-“
Movement. Two sets of slitted headlights rolled in from the east.
“Time to go.” Fidi rose and darted down the rubble slope like a cat. I followed with considerably less grace and joined him at the corner of the building. We waited until the two cars swung into the lot. Fidi made some kind of hand sign-How very operator, I thought wryly- and crossed the street at a crouched run. I joined him at the corner of the warehouse and we pushed past a heavily rusted man-door and into the building.
It was almost pitch-black inside. All we had to see by was reflected arc-light coming through the holey roof and the dim blue phosphorescence of algae. The floor was slick and squishy with mold and mushrooms beneath an inch or so of fetid water. Even having grown up among D-Block’s cornucopia of odors, the stench it let off when stirred by our passage almost had me tossing the protein noodles I’d had for dinner. We had to tread carefully to avoid splashing, our boots leaving swirly patterns in the black scum. As Fidi led me toward a set of rickety perf-steel stairs, I could hear a pair of male voices from up above.
“…so I think I might actually try it.”
“Seriously? All those spam netmails are cons, y’know.”
“But they said it was a special offer-“
“Just for you? It’s a form letter, man.”
We reached the steps, their platforms furred with ferrophagic lichen. Monta crept up the first few slowly to test them, then beckoned me onward. I did my best to put my boots close to the wall. One of the treads bent alarmingly beneath my foot, but the Blues above were too busy talking to hear the creak.
“Why are you so interested in it, anyway?”
“Well, I dunno…it’s just, the ones you see in the A-vids are a lot bigger than mine. Hard to admit it, but-“
“You gotta stop watching so much of that shit, man. You think they hire those guys ‘cause they’re normal?”
I couldn’t help smiling a little. I had a good idea what they were talking about and under normal circumstances I’d probably laugh out loud.
Fidi had reached the small landing at the top of the stairs. Past it was another door that led onto a metal-grate catwalk-which was where our targets were. Little speckles of light from the ceiling half-illuminated them, giving us little glimpses of their kit: web belts, collapsible-stock Yakkorp battle rifles, a cybernetic eye. One was within a few yards of the door, the other a ways farther down the catwalk.
“I-I guess I know that, tva, but still…I can’t help feeling like crap over it.”
“It’s a hundy not worth worrying about. You know, you oughta start coming to the gym again. Now that’ll make you feel better. I’m hitting legs tomorrow…”
I turned to Fidi, who’d taken his rifle in his hands. I took that as a signal to unsling the glittersaw. He beckoned me close and whispered. “You take the near one, I’ll get the far. On my mark.” I nodded, moving into a ready crouch with my saw in hand.
“Shit. Maybe I’ll take you up on that, as long as these uptown blindies don’t keep us up too late-“
Fidi slapped my back and I lunged forward into a run with the saw held low. I hated to interrupt this male bonding session, but business was business. The near man heard the clang of boots on steel and turned just quick enough to watch me whip the saw up at him as hard as I could. He only half-raised his Yakkorp before the buzzing blade bit low into his side. It burst his lungs before he could scream, gnawed through the rifle with a thin shriek, and burst free at his left shoulder almost without slowing down. He and his gun both splattered to the floor in multiple pieces. Just as the acrid tang of scorched bone entered my nose, two somethings buzzed past me with no more noise than a couple of big insects. An instant later there were two wet slaps from farther down the catwalk, followed by the sound of a collapsing body. For a few seconds, the only sound was a thin trickle as blood dripped through the catwalk and into the muck below.
“All good, Sawyer?” whispered Fidi.
“That’s an affirmatory, Monta.”
I could almost hear his eyes rolling as he came over, glancing down at the Blue’s corpse. “Well, that’s one way to do it.”
“You told me to-“
“Oh, I’m not criticizing.” He crouched, flashing a red-lensed penlight over the remains. The man was rather fit, wearing the far-too-mundane clothes an out-of-uniform security man might have on. “It surely doesn’t leave anything to chance.” He paused on the severed left arm, which was a sleek bionic finished like brushed steel. “’Stride slay me if that’s not an Amsidyne custom.”
“Kings, I think you’re right. They really did come loaded for pergato.”
“Yeah, someone’s probably looking for that. Let’s check mine.”
Fidi’s kill was, of course, rather neater. The man was unblemished except for a pair of fat entrance wounds through his chest and eye. “Nice shooting, Fidi.”
He shook his head, seeming almost offended. “Twenty yards is dead easy even with subs. Now, let’s see what that fucking repo man is doing here. Have that Assegai ready.”