Ali had Greg zip tied up and had stolen his plate carrier for herself, the truck pulled into the clear space next to the other vehicle. I hadn’t gotten a look at the lead car until Max’s drone finally caught up and displayed a top down view of the whole scene. The team had surrounded the lot and set up fringing positions, leaving one of them lying down in the bed of the rusty pickup truck that had carried the forward team into position.

When the cat-mobile pulled in near the truck, there was a tense moment of silence. Max had me plugged in to all of the audio channels, and not a single person spoke while the dust settled out of the headlight’s beams. The four armored soldiers on the corners of the armored vehicle remained in place, and then the door opened and Greg came stumbling out, his elbows up, with his hands bound behind his head and held in a tight grip by a wary Ali. She followed right behind him, kicking his knees forward to force him to step while holding her pistol tight against her own hip.

“Stand down! Everyone, there’s been a change of plans!” Greg ordered, his face was all busted up and his voice completely devoid of bravado and his previous tough-guy facade.

More lights, as well as a few laser sights, burst into life from the edges of the lot to wash over the scene as the prepared ambush forces trained their weapons on the pair. A pair of first-person perspectives from what seemed like rifle-mounted cameras joined the cloud of screens I watched the situation through.

“What the hell, Greg? You couldn’t keep a straight face for a fifthteen minute drive?” One of the soldiers yelled back, and about half of the hidden mercs stepped out of the bushes and moved to surround Ali and Greg in a half circle, pinning them with harsh light against the cat-mobile.

The comm channel between the armored soldiers sparked up at the same time. The talkative one who had started the earlier conversation breaking the stoic silence first.

“My suit’s malfunctioning! Everything’s locked up, what the hell is happening?”

“Mine too.” The growly voiced guy answered. “I’m locked out of everything, I can’t even eyeclick to switch channels.”

The serious voice that had shut down the earlier banter with a single line spoke up. “We’re fucked, they made us, must’a used some kind of override.”

The talkative one shot back, a note of rising panic in his voice. “What do you mean ‘they made us’?! This was supposed to just be some quick escort job, easy money!”

“I told you not to say that!”

“Why not? We’re fucked now anyway, aren’t we? Damnit, I knew–”

The serious voice cut off the first guy. “Whoever this is, they’re probably listening to us right now if they can lock us down like this. It has to be offworld tech, the good stuff.” There was a grunt of effort as the mercenary tried and failed to break from his frozen position. “If you can hear me, this was all Greg’s idea, we’re just following orders.”

The first guy sounded truly panicked now. “Really? Just following orders? No one even told me about these orders! Whoever you are, I didn’t have shit to do with this! I got a family!”

Max, who had become completely blank faced when it became clear that he was truly wrong about the situation and had lost our bet, regained his facial features and his new eyebrows narrowed into an angry V.

“Well… screw these guys. Don’t go getting a big head on me after this.” Max said, without a single shred of irony, through the private line before switching to the open channel. “Listen up, chuckle heads, this isn't the party I had in mind. I can’t believe you are a bunch of no good contract breakers. You’re supposed to be sell-swords, not sell-outs! Where’s your sense of honor?”

There was some confused “Uhhh”-ing, before multiple voices clogged the mix with a cacophony of pleas, insults, and threats. It dawned on me that Max must have patched his admonishment through to everyone. The people locked down in the suits of power armor lead the pleas, while the lead team, who had yet to discover their weapons equally locked down, voiced the threats and insults.

The truly loudest of the bunch was the lady trapped in the driver’s compartment and locked out of the controls. She was screaming a stream of jumbled threats and curses loudly enough to be quietly heard in the background of Rin and Ali’s mics. I muted her, figuring she would be fine as long as Max could keep her trapped in the truck.

Instead, I focused on the guy who had stepped forward from the encircling line of mercs. He was wearing a full body-armor jacket that gave much more coverage than the more common and cheaper plate carriers, as well as an offworld-made ballistic helmet with a clear HUD visor that dropped down to cover the top half of his face.

“Cut the chatter, squint, there's nothing you can do from wherever you’re hiding. We’ll find you in a bit.” The merc replied to Max, his eyes locked onto Ali. “Just drop the weapon, honey. You’re still outnumbered and outgunned. We don’t need Greg anyway, he only won the vote by three hands last time. You got nothing.” He stepped forward, angling to the side. The guy on the other end of his formation moved with mirrored steps to flank my assistant on the other side.

“Shut it, Niko!” Greg protested, but Ali yanked on his tied up hands to shut him up.

Ali’s whispered voice came through her mic, clear and controlled. “Max, have the guys in armor move on the ones with accessible weapons. ” She pulled Greg over to block herself from one of the guys, and pointed her pistol at the one who had spoken, raising her voice. “Drop your weapons and eat dirt!”

A feminine voice called out from a covered position still back in the bushes. “Make one move and your head explodes, GPOS!”

Max’s internal voice came through again. This time it felt strange, less conscious, somehow unspoken yet heard. “Well I know who’s getting shot first.”

The guy with the visor, Niko, disregarded Greg’s order and took another slow step. “Man… you really botched this one, didn’t you, Greg?”

A hatch opened on the top of the old MRAP, and a turret mounted light machine gun rose out of the vehicle and pointed with mechanical precision at one of the mercenaries hiding in the bushes and trees around the edge of the property. At the same time, the four armored soldiers dismounted from the truck and walked towards the unsuspecting line of fighters.

Niko smiled and kept his rifle trained on Ali. “Last chance, honey. Drop your weapon or we fill you both full of lead, and– auchhaakkk!”

His smooth threat was cut off with strangled gurgles as one of the suits of armor grabbed him by the neck from behind and lifted him into the air. He kicked his legs and dropped his rifle to uselessly claw and grab at the cold ceramic and steel hand around his neck. There was an audible crack, and his legs stopped kicking before the suit dropped him. Simultaneously, the turret fired a single three round burst and two yelps sounded out from amongst the bushes. The rest of the group shouted and pointed their weapons at Ali and Greg, squeezing locked triggers to no effect. Within seconds, angry pointing gave way to confused fumbling, then to frustrated shouting, followed finally by a panicked retreat and scramble for sidearms.

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Tires crunched over cracked and broken pavement as a familiar pair of stolen SUVs kicked up a fresh cloud of dust as they slid to a stop at the edge of the lot to block the entrance. Already blood speckled gangers began to pour out, firing wildly in the direction of the crowd of disorganized mercenaires.

Chin-strap jumped onto the hood of one of the vehicles, yelling “Y’all wanna play? Well then let’s play!” over the roar of gunfire. People began to drop faster than the stock market when the Links showed up. Relatively safe back in the van, I watched through the drone's slightly angled camera as Greg took a line of automatic fire across his chest and jerked in Ali’s grip. She pushed his body towards the gangers and dove underneath the armored truck, crawling on her belly to escape the firefight.

I refocused on the battle, noticing that when the mercs turned their rifles on the gangers they spat out bursts of fire without issue. After a confused few seconds, filled with screaming death and flashing muzzle flares that lit the yard up as bright as day, the unarmored mercenaries had been downed and the street toughs were being swept up or chased off by Max’s growing squad of remote controlled power armor puppets. Chaotic fighting quickly yielded before the stolen suits’ short bursts of fire, punctuated by exacting movements and methodological precision as they efficiently pierced the hearts and minds of everyone still moving on the field.

The guys trapped inside the armor pleaded and blubbered as they were forced to act out the slaughter, the powerful suits’ servos and motors overriding their attempts to fight the forced actions. Their voices slowed, their words becoming docile and incoherent over the 90 seconds it took for the fight to finish, until there was nothing but silence. Little O2 symbols blinked into existence above the head of each armored merc in the overhead shot, each crossed out with a red-slashed cancel sign.

“This whole ‘make ‘em fight each other’ thing is turning into our signature move. But hey, if it ain't broke, dont fix it! Hahahaha” Max said through the group line, his voice rising to the top of the mix of audio channels I was listening to.

What was briefly a discordant mix of shouting, gunshots, bloody gurgles, and groans, now was down to Ali’s ragged breathing, Raschel’s anxious sobbing, and Rin’s terrified silence. The only other voice being the muffled screams and thudding kicks of the muted driver still trapped in the cockpit of the MRAP.

“Max, have the suits take care of the driver, and start grabbing anything useful. We’re taking this truck.” Ali’s voice was authoritative, causing Max to straighten to full attention and slap himself in the forehead with a salute.

“Yes’m, right away.” He replied. The walking armored coffins hurried to carry out her orders, and I let out a breath that I didn’t realize I had been holding.

Five minutes later, Rin was turned around in the passenger seat so he could glare at Ali as Raschel drove the van up the winding road into the foothills of the Blueridge mountains. The windshield of the van had caught a few stray bullets from the firefight, and the cab was filled with a whistling breeze that tasted of gravel. Max was piloting the armored cat-mobile with one of the emptied Mark-2’s, and had it driving out in front of us while talking our inexperienced driver through the process.

Ali had, on my insistence, joined me in the back of the van after I ordered her out of the driver’s seat and to get some rest. She had deep bags under her eyes, a couple of fresh scratches and bruises, and her hands shook as she brought a bottle of water to cracked lips. She had carried us through the situation, and I was too worried about her to give in to her stubborn determination to continue driving.

Rin finally said what was on his mind. “Can you sideswipe some trees or something with that damned APC?”

Max, who was currently in the form of a 6 inch tall bobblehead mounted to the dash, turned his head in a super creepy unblinking manner to fix his grin on Rin, who of course couldn’t see him and wasn't paying attention to the tablet that displayed his avatar to everyone but myself.

“APC? That’s a whole different vehicle, this’un here’s an MRAP. Though… do you have something to say about the talented Miguel Bellotina’s mural?” Max’s voice was filled with a tight expectant intensity underneath his affected accent.

Rin rapidly reddened, “It’s distracting, and too easily recognizable. Satellites will be able to spot… that… even from 500 miles up.”

Max’s bobblehead grin widened. “I can scrub our images, don’t worry about that.”

Leaving them to argue in the front seat, I turned to look at Ali. She was staring blankly at the side of the cab, seeming to look at nothing with an entirely vacant look in her eyes. “You alright, Ali?”

She shook her head slowly, but didn’t look back at me. “Yes, sir.”

I frowned, gesturing to the narrow space between Tevin’s bulky armored form and the cabs wall. “There's enough space to lay down there. How about you finish your water, get something to eat, and crash out for a while?” I turned my focus inward, wanting to check with Max internally before continuing. “Max, are we clear to the border?”

“C’mon, she's hilarious! You have to admit it, there's no shame in liking some internet cat-girl, is there?” Max spoke through the tablet to Rin, trying to convince him to admit to his guilty pleasure while answering me mentally at the same time. “Yeah, we’re good.”

“How good?” I pressed, trying to ignore the other conversation.

“Good good, I sent them some stolen authorization codes and told them to stay out of our way. Masquerading as black-ops is totally going to be our second signature move, it’s just too easy.” Max continued before going back to attempting to pry an admission out of Rin. “How many chairs do you think she’s destroyed on stream? It dosen’t say in her bio, but it does say she’s broken like 15,000 credits worth of equipment with her stunts.”

I shook my head and refocused on Ali, breaking the lull that my distraction had caused. “We’ll be at the border soon, and Max says it’s a clear shot until we enter the buffer zone. So… get some sleep while you can, we’ll need you rested and ready for when things get hairy again.”

She nodded, mechanically taking a drink and chewing through a self-heating field meal we had liberated from the mercenary truck. “Yes, sir.”

“Hey.” Her shoulder felt cold and clammy under my hand when I reached out to reassure her. “Thank you, by the way. Things are messy now, but… I’ll try to clean them up moving forward. Today was definitely not part of the plan, but I don’t think we would have been able to improvise our way through without you on the team.”

Max popped into existence between us, pushing my hand off of her shoulder and startling me with his big round face leaned in close to my own, still using the goofy accent he had for some inexplicable reason decided to start using. “Hold your horses there, partner. What's going on back here?”

Since Max had spoken to me mentally and Ali couldn’t see this version of his avatar, she replied despite Max’s antics. “Thank you, Nick. I’ll be fine, I’m just burnt. It’s been a long damn day.”

I used my newfound ability to actually get ahold of Max to shove him out of the way so I could nod a reply to Ali, who finally made eye contact but didn’t seem to register my movement as I pushed the annoying AI off of Tevin’s chest.

My smile crept into my voice. “Good to hear. Let Max worry about security for a while. With the squad of Mark-2’s and the new truck, I think he can keep a lid on things for a few hours while you sleep. You’re in charge when you wake up too, I’m going to trust you to keep Max in line and keep us moving while I go back and finish the Trial.”

She didn’t return my smile, and only nodded. “Understood, sir. Goodluck.”

Max had remained where I pushed him, but did not look happy about it. His arms crossed over his chest as he floated cross-legged like some kind of genie apparition between the two front seats. “You said you weren't interested! I am officially calling dibs.”

My head spun a little as I shook it and rose at the same time, using the built-in cabinets as handholds as I picked my way over Tevin to the Link at the back of the van. I settled down on the saddle and thought of one last thing I needed to say before I Linked up to finally return to my Row. “Rin, I want you and Max working on getting the Impex built as soon as possible. If we need to stop and camp somewhere in the buffer zone, then that's what we need to do. I don’t want to enter Borealia without it.”

With one last look at Max’s floating avatar, I answered him aloud as I felt the locking claws of the saddle cinch around me. “I meant what I said, but don’t get your hopes up, Max.”