Kate- I wonder who's the big guy with Harold, he isn't hard to look at, looks like he's jacked with cybernetics.

Cere- He's a full-body cyborg, I don't see any biological elements.

Kate- No wonder he's sculpted like a Greek God, he's literally sculpted.

*Awkward silence*

Kate- Let's file that for later.

Harold- "Sorry about Spazz. Please don't be too mad. He has some challenges and tends to forget everything once his attention is taken by something. He's bad with people, but he always means well."

Kate- "Will he be a problem?"

Harold- "Yes and no."

Kate- "Meaning?"

Harold- "He'll be my problem, not yours. don't worry, it's all small stuff, he's just a bit erratic, that's all, he won't ever try to hurt you and he's solid on the job, he doesn't fuck up on those. Best damn E-Jockey I know and I know a lot of peeps. It's just that at home he tends to lose focus on small things..."

Kate- "Like pants..."

Harold- "Rarely... this one was a bit out of spec even for him."

Kate- "Autism?"

Harold- "Maybe, but nothing severe, he's mostly a bit quirky sometimes."

Kate- *Sigh* "Looks like I don't have much choice letting this one go."

Cere- It isn't as if you are always perfect yourself.

Kate- True that, I guess we are all screw-ups, all of us humans. "Alright, I'll take your word for it. As long as he doesn't become a problem on the job."

Marcel Champagne- "Patron are you going to prezent us?"

Kate- That's a strong French accent he got there.

Harold- "Right, this is Marcel, he's our resident combat cyborg, he'll be with you in the field. They already heard about you so I'll skip that. Spazz will man the tech in general, drones, code, hacks, general handling of the systems he has legal access to and some not-so-legal grey zone stuff. I'll be in command and control and use my extensive experience and contacts to make the job easier for you guys. I might go in the field occasionally but I'm no spring chicken, I risk becoming a nuisance if things get intense.

Kate- "Split?"

Harold- " Three for you and Marcel each, two for me on the profits. Ammo and gear is deducted first from the pool then we split."

Kate- "Spazz?"

Harold- "Work release program."

Marcel- "Le petit s'est fait pincer... he got caught as a môme... a kid. Waz bullied a lot you see, so he learned how to hack implants by himself. Started to give seizures to hiz bullies. Called himself the Spasm as if he was a cartoon superhero. Then started to do hiz tricks on bad people he saw around him. Tried to play Robin Hood too, small scale, all discrete-like. All that until he hacked a kid wooze father had some pull in a local corpo, the kid waz a real bastard psycho if you want my opinion. Anyway, the hammer fell on Spazz, got put in public reeducation camp and saddled with millionz of credits in debt."

Kate- "How old was he?"

Marcel- "Started at nine, got caught at twelve."

Kate- "Damn! That's some talent for a twerp."

Marcel- "He only got better with Harold's hounding. Hiz daemons are top, Depending on the model and security status he can hack eyes and limbs in seconds. Sometimes all we have to do iz get to an address and bag a reward."

Harold- " I took his debt what, three years back? He has yet to fuck up on the job once. He just won't take causes he doesn't believe in though. I tried once and he went on a hunger strike for a week. Not that I blame him, it was a shit dirty job."

Kate- "Alright, can work with that. Wasn't expecting that..."

Marcel- "Well, he does look like a little shit with his small size, mohawk and over-puffed biceps, but he haz a big heart."

Kate- "What's your story?" *points vaguely at his whole body*

Marcel- "I got cooked, nice and crispy, first job."

Kate- "Damn, sorry, fire?" *shiver*

Just can't forget that burning sensation...

Marcel- "Microwave canon"

Kate- "Anti-combat cyborg armament? What the fuck were you hunting?"

Marcel- "A printer."

Kate- "Shit...!"

Harold- "I fucked up at the time, bad, wasn't at my best. He was green and I was a drunk."

Marcel- "Sure but you made up for it twice over with this thick bod you got me, patron."

Harold- "Alright, drop the discobolus pose."

Marcel- "Never!"

Harold- *Grunt in despair* "I'm catching secondary shame. Should never have hired a bouncer during a brawl in a bar."

Kate- "Wait, do you fight with all your employees? Are you mental?"

Harold- "No comment... anyway, there will be time for that later."

Kate- "Job?"

Harold- "Job... SPAZZ, GET YOUR FURRY WOLVERINE ASS IN HERE!"

Kate- "Make sure it's covered."

Marcel- *snort*

Spazz- "YEAH, YEAH... coming... oh... hey... right hum...." *small voice* "we good?"

Kate- "Ain't the first small prick I see dangling out there, grew up at the Asstro, I'll survive."

Spazz- "Right... herm... is it really that small?"

Marcel- "So, who iz it thiz time patron?"

Harold- "Scout chief Eager Beaver. She's a big-time terrorist and bomb specialist."

Kate- "Weird fucking alias."

Marcel- "Canadian Rezistance?"

Harold- *Nods"

Spazz- "My data sifter agent caught her yesterday out of an abandoned landing pad plugged into an old solar array. The picture was terrible but I had enough for a positive behavioral ID. Total luck to catch her on that, the rest of the dome is basically dead. It was breached by a corpo war about what 20 years or so back? Nasty place with lots of bad juju. She seemed to be building herself a rat nest. Haven't seen her on any other camera in the city. Looks like she was dropped directly on the surface by a private craft with a jetpack is my guess. High-level discrete infiltration stuff in my opinion. She would be a ghost if she had not fucked up with that camera. Odds are we are the only ones who know she's here."

Kate- "What is a New Eden Empire terrorist doing in Paradise?"

Harold- "Fuck if I know but she brought a lot of camping gear with her, Spazz?"

Spazz- "Right, I've eyeballed at least forty kilos of explosive paste, a few claymores, a drone... no big gun though, she's gearing for war from afar."

Kate- "Fuck me... Right, I heard about these guys long ago but I'm not too clear on their story?"

Harold- "Right, true, I guess it was way before your time... won't hurt to give you some idea. When Carter won his second election in the US, he had all his opponents jailed and murdered, then named himself Presipope of a new theocratic totalitarian government with himself as a living God, using all the bleeding edge technology secretly developed at the time to keep himself from dying of old age. About ten years after the world order was in the shitter, the economy was in shambles and international supply lines were completely cut by climate change and social unrest. New Eden was on its knees in terms of raw resources and a revolution was brewing, so Carter did a whopsie colonialist invasion of the rest of the Americas including Canada to fill up his chest.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Canada was the first and had no chance due to its geography. Most of the population was barely 200 km inside the country lines and it had been affected a lot by the supply issues, with barely any electricity in the past three years during which the scouts had helped the population survive winter through the knowledge they had of winter survival, they filled the hole left by a broken government.

Anyway, long story short, when New-Eden invaded they were the only ones in a position to resist, so they did like their predecessors did in Poland during WW2 and took arms to resist a fascist dictator. Resist they did... nearly to the last. They traded their camping badges for IED ones... blew up shit all across the invader's territory, they spoke and looked like the invaders so it was easy to blend in.

Lately, they have been calmer, not as active, don't know how many are left, but god damn, the invasion was 80 years back and they are still at it. Though motherfuckers. " I think she's one of the last of a dying breed, she's been known for over fifty years. Not much is known of her, not her original look, not her real name, she's a fucking ghost, all we have is a handle and a bank of idiosyncracies allowing us to ID her."

Spazz- "Wait, so she's one of the good guys?"

Harold- "She was, until they started to get more desperate, she started to bomb public spaces instead of military targets. Hospitals, churches, schools... War makes people monsters if you are long at it enough."

Spazz- *Nods* " I'm sad for them but there are limits to what can be allowed to be done in the name of a country long dead. Kids don't deserve to blow up for their grandparents' crimes. I'm in."

Kate- "Lethal or non-lethal?"

Harold- " Non-lethal if we can. Truthfully a lot of people root for those particular underdogs, Carter has been trying to expand his cult in Paradise for decades always up to no good. Bounty is the same and I prefer if we don't get too much aggro."

Kate- "I hate those fuckers...*

Cere- You OK Kate? You might be tempted to let her in the wind considering...

Kate- No, I'm good, they deserve it but not us. She brought a bomb into Paradise, lots of folks would die if it breached a dome.

Cere- Right, I was about to mention that.

Harold- "Anyway, in this case, we need to play the Swiss card and shoot the motherfuckers on both sides, armed neutrality, otherwise we'll suffer. No matter if we empathize."

Kate- The who? Cere what are the Swiss?

Cere- An old country in Europe, they got wiped out during the first half of the last century's purges, nearly to the last. The militias found their multiethnic government repugnant, so they exterminated them and pillaged their banks. They used the shifty reputations of the Swiss banks and tons of disinformation to accuse them of being Jewish with all the things it implied then.

Kate- Second Holocaust?

Cere- Yes, a crazy bloodbath still felt to this day where more than three-quarters of the population in Europe was exterminated in a succession of ethnic cleansings. We will never know the exact numbers of dead but they are in the hundreds of millions.

*Harold speaking indistinctly to Spazz and Marcel*

Kate- "Right, sorry I was learning some stuff from my Cere, so, what's the plan?"

Harold- "No worries, just to be certain, you have bomb training right? Cherry told me you had some knowledge in that field."

Kate- "Right, but it was a while ago, not sure feeling prime to face fifty years of bomb-making, 'll need some serious refresh to even come close to being useful against that."

Spazz- "Don't worry, once I learned we could be dealing with that I got myself a training virtu, I'll hook you up, I tried it but I was no good. Too nervous when my body is in presential."

Marcel- "And while my bod is magnifique, it isn't dexterous enough to play with small things, I'm better at smashing things."

Harold- "Don't stress too much though, traps in metal tunnels are not as discrete as on the surface of a planet where you can dig the ground or use bushes. This should give us an advantage, plus Spazz has drones with high-end optics and she doesn't know she was made. I wouldn't be surprised if her mining was minimal."

Spazz- "Don't worry, my agents will be primed for anything in and off the book."

Harold- "Any space suit anxiety we need to know about? You'll be in a near vacuum, the dome is completely breached."

Kate- "... no... No, I don't think so, 'm good."

Harold- "You sure?"

Kate- "Yeah, might sweat it a bit but nothing paralyzing."

Harold- "That's normal, good that you know how you react, prepare mentally for it, you'll do the VR in the suit to acclimate."

Kate- "The dome was never rebuilt?"

Harold- "A dirty bomb was used or something blew up. The place is flooded with enough radiation to make the endeavour too costly for at least a hundred years. Back then I heard all internal data was lost, wiped by the radiation. Might have been intentional. Don't worry though, the suit will be enough, though I strongly suggest monitoring and bringing some iodine tablets just in case the seal gets breached and you survive."

Kate- "Right, won't lie this is higher stakes than what I'm used to, is it worth the extra risk?"

Harold- "200k minus expanse and split as agreed, give or take 70k for you I'd say."

Kate- *Whistle* "Not bad."

Harold- "High risk and all that jazz."

Kate- "Ok... right... ok... ok... I'm in."

Marcel- "Are you sure old man, this is risky, my nanotube armouring can't do shit against so much kinetic force."

Harold- "It ain't as bad as you think, this is a vacuum, it wouldn't be that bad... if a claymore blow in your face you'd be protected against the pellets... Only the really big stuff would kill you outright. But you're right, this isn't a safe or easy one. Tell you what, Kate will try out the VR and we'll see what we got. If anyone has major doubt after that we abbort no fuss and sell the info under Spazz sifter ID."

Kate- "Fine by me, I really need the corners but I don't especially want to blow up."

Marcel- "Oui, good enough for me."

Spazz- "Do I have a vote?"

Harold- *smirk* " Nope, go set her up then keep an eye on the dinner ticket see if your eye caught something extra."

Spazz- *Head drops* "Right." *Mumbles* "Hate juicing images for info."