Embezzlement: A deprecated form of crime that involved misappropriation of funds by a company employee. Has since been folded into the general term 'felony theft' when applied to common employees. For executive level employees, see 'Discretionary Funding.'
-Definition of embezzlement from The Corporate Dictionary, 2042
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“Samurai things, I suppose,” the woman said with a wry tilt to her lips. “Alana McIntire, formerly a Lieutenant in the Stalking Tigers, now an unnamed samurai. You must be Erica,” she said, holding her hand out to shake. I took her hand, and she proceeded to crush mine in return. “Gotta ask, what’s with the plastic?”
“Uh…well, I kind of became a samurai in the middle of nowhere on my way to a…convention.” I said the last part quietly, feeling my cheeks heating up. It seemed embarrassing to admit in front of the first other samurai I’ve met. Wait, what? Oh, that explained why I was Sigma 2. “Haven’t felt safe enough since then to change into armor, even when I had the points for it.”
Alana hummed an acknowledgement and gestured towards a seat at the table. I sat down, breathing a sigh of relief at sitting in a real chair again, some of the tension finally draining from my body. She sat opposite me and offered a glass of water, which I gladly gulped down in an instant.
“Sounds like you’ve been through a lot. I can’t say you’re safe here, but you can at least relax a bit. Why don’t you fill me in on your side of things, and I’ll tell you what’s been happening here in return?”
Taking a deep breath, the story began to spill out. Crashing my car and nearly dying in an explosion of my own making. Becoming a samurai. Wandering through the woods, and then through the town. The longer the story dragged on, the more taken aback Alana seemed. It didn’t look like she was impressed, or awed…mostly, she just looked bewildered.
“…and, well, after the last Model Six went down, I made it to the wall.”
“After all that, I’m amazed you made it here. I half expected you to fall into an unknown cave system five steps from the car, with how your luck has been. No wonder you look like shit.” I released a manic giggle at that, less because I found it funny and more because I think I was just at the limit.
“Can you tell me what happened here? All I know right now is that it started this morning.”
Alana ran a hand through her hair and leaned back in her seat, looking as if all the exhaustion of the day had hit her all at once when she heard the question.
“Dylta, can you just send her what you found? And a summary.” She looked up and to the left as she spoke- did I look like that when I talked to Juny? I should probably think of a better way of doing that…
“Vanguard AI Dylta is requesting permission to send a data packet!”
“Granted, Juny.” Less than a second later, a series of documents popped up on my augs. Bank records, internal documents from the local detachment of the Stalking Tigers PMC, communiques, and more. I promptly skipped over all of that and went right to the summary.
It was stupider than I could have possibly imagined. Apparently the previous commander, Colonel Tavish, had been embezzling company funds for years. The tanks on the walls were essentially turrets, because he had funneled most of the maintenance funds into private accounts, telling his subordinates that they were barely funded well enough to keep the weapons working. The drive systems were entirely shot.
And that wasn’t even the worst part. He had been stealing ninety percent of the money meant for patrolling the outer town- basically, he was taking money that should have gone towards hazard pay. That meant only ten percent of the town was searched for Antithesis over any given period, which in turn meant the Antithesis went unnoticed in several locations that went particularly long times without a check.
“You’re pranking me, right? No one could possibly be this stupid.”
“I fucking wish,” Alana responded while rubbing her eyes. She took a sip from a canteen before continuing. I had my suspicions about the contents. “I wasn’t even looking for it. Dylta brought it to my attention when I asked it to find out how the Antithesis got past the wall this morning- so I could plug the hole.”
“And then you confronted him. Juny told me there was a coup, but I had no idea a samurai was involved.”
“Sorry! We’re not allowed to give out information on other Vanguards without their permission!”
“I wasn’t blaming you, don’t worry.” Alanna must have realized I was speaking to Juny, as she didn’t comment. I suppose she understood the oddness just as well as I did.
“Couldn’t trust him to lead the defense after that. Even if I ignore the crimes, it was just plain incompetence that led to the breach. Honestly, I wasn’t really intending to kill him though. It just…happened.”
“Did anyone try to stop you?”
“Not once Dylta sent out a notice that I was a samurai. Even his supporters didn’t want to fuck with that.”
“Huh. And you’ve just been fighting ever since?”
“I gave out some samurai grade ammo, too, but yes. I organized our rapid response squads and started burning out hives. There’s too many for us to make much headway, but Dylta thinks we’ve been slowing them down.”
“I think I saw some of your handiwork,” I replied, thinking back to all the ashes and embers I had encountered at the tail end of my journey. “So, what now? I don’t know much about incursions, but I know they snowball.”
“First, I’d like to be sure. Are you willing to help us? You just spent days walking through the woods only to stumble onto another battlefield, and you’ve never fought a day in your life prior to all this, from what I can gather. I would understand if you’d prefer to go home.”
Huh. Come to think of it, I never did even consider that option, did I? I sort of just assumed that, well, I was a samurai, so this was just my life now. But I suppose I wouldn’t be a samurai if I was the type of person to just walk away.
“Thanks, but I’m not going anywhere. If nothing else, it’d leave a bad taste in my mouth if I left now and people died because of it.” Alana smiled momentarily at my response before her serious demeanor returned.
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“The first thing I did once I took command was contact The Family. Most of the higher level samurai are busy with one thing or another, but apparently they had a way to contact Mountaineer, the local samurai, and he’s on his way.”
“Never heard of him. And if he’s local, where is he now?”
“Local, as in to the Appalachian Mountains. He’s like a cryptid- the man just hikes up and down the entire mountain range wiping out hives. From what I’ve heard, he never stops in any towns or cities.” Thinking about it, I suppose it made sense that someone was doing that. After all, the mountains were even more sparsely populated now than they were half a century ago, and they were never the most populous region. That made them the perfect place for a hive to grow in secret.
“Well, that explains the devastated patch of forest I passed through. Looked like a tornado decided to touch down in the mountains just to fuck that place in particular.”
“And that’s exactly what we need right now. Problem is, he’s busy with another hive cluster, and won’t be here for at least two more days, so it’s up to us to slow the Antithesis down for that long.” With that, Alanna stood, signaling the end of the conversation. She waved over one of the mercs that were still in the room.
“I’m going to burn down one more hive before I call it a night. I would ask you to join us, but you clearly need some down time. This here is Sergeant Haverson, he’ll get you squared away.” The sergeant himself nodded in my direction.
“Ma’am. I’ll get you set up with food and a guest suite. Won’t be the Ritz, but the food will be warm, and if you’ll pardon my saying so, you look like you could use the bath.” He had a strong Southern drawl. The drawl itself wasn’t rare in these parts, but his was unusually thick. I had other concerns, though. I furrowed my brow. I’d just arrived, and I was already being sidelined? I guess I was starting to feel pretty awful, now that the adrenaline was wearing off, but I couldn’t just sit on the sidelines while other people fought.
“Thanks, but I’m fine, I can-“ Alana cut me off with a raised hand, her entire demeanor changing. One moment she was presenting a casual front, and the next she was a soldier again.
“No. I can’t give you orders, but I’ve seen that look before on recruits.” She relaxed again, and her voice took on a gentle tone. It was impressive how quickly she could shift modes. “You’re still riding an adrenaline high, and you’re going to crash if you try to keep going. One thing I’ve learned as a soldier is that you’ve got to rest whenever you can, otherwise you’ll just get yourself killed because you’re too tired at a critical moment.”
I winced; it was hard to argue with her when I’d just noted the imminent crash myself.
“Alright, you win. Any other advice?”
She shook her head.
“That’s it for now. Could you give your AI permission to speak to mine? Dylta tells me they need consent for that kind of thing.” I nodded, and Juny let me know she was now in contact with Alana’s companion.
“Thanks. Alright, I’m heading out.” She nodded to Haverson, who gave a quick salute. “She’s all yours, Sergeant.”
With that, Alana turned and headed out of the room. So ended my first conversation with another samurai- hopefully, we would have more time later. I turned towards Haverson and gave him a closer look, finding him to be a tall, bookish man. He didn’t seem like the type to join a PMC…but I guess that was why he was the quartermaster and not a fighter.
“Welcome to Boone, ma’am! What’ll you have first, gear, food, or a bed?”
“I’d love some food, I think, but what do you mean by gear?”
“Oh, well, by international law, samurai have free access to any equipment they need during incursions. This isn’t a true incursion, but it still counts,” he explained. Juny took that moment to cut in.
“While you can help yourself to their armory, it is unlikely they have anything that will actually be useful to you. Even Class I equipment is vastly superior to the weapons and armor a private army has!”
“Alright, I’ll just buy some stuff later then,” I said to her in reply. Haverson gave me an odd look. “Sorry, talking to the voice in my head. You mentioned food?”
“Right this way! There’s a cafeteria just a few floors down.”
I followed him to the elevator, and we sat in silence for a few moments before the doors spat us out onto what seemed to be a barracks floor. Numbered rooms sat on either side of the hallway at precise intervals, and I could see several bunk beds through the door as someone entered one. We walked past these room and around a corner, ending up at a large set of double doors.
Haverson opened the doors and waved me in before following himself. The cafeteria looked to take up at least half of this floor, which I assumed meant it serviced the others as well. There was only one thing on the menu at this time of night: burgers. Sadly, no fries. I plopped a burger on a paper plate and took a seat at one of the empty tables, of which there were many. The room wasn’t empty, but there were only a couple squads worth of men and women filling it out.
His own plate in hand, Haverson sat down across the table.
“Can I ask you a few questions? Alana didn’t really have much time to talk before she took off, so I only got the important bits,” I asked between bites. The meat was a bit overcooked.
“Fire away.”
“What’s with all the tanks? I mean, this is a small town, right? Doesn’t seem like the type of place to warrant so many of them.”
“Alright, well, let me ask you a question in turn. How many M1 Abrams tanks do you think the USA made before it folded?” The conspiratorial grin told me he didn’t expect a correct answer, so I figured I’d aim high.
“A few thousand?”
“Close. Try twenty. Twenty thousand tanks. They had thousands of them just sitting in the desert, in case they ever needed them. A ton of ‘em were sold to other countries, but when the good ol’ US of A went under, all the little nations that replaced it suddenly had a whole lot of armor and no one to use it. Not to mention a ton of debt. So, they went out to the highest bidder.” My jaw dropped at that. They auctioned off tanks to anyone that could afford them? I would expect that sort of thing from the corpos these days, but back then?
“That still doesn’t explain why you’ve got so many here, though.”
“Well, see, tanks are a little bit outdated these days. Samurai-tech is one thing, but a 120mm shell is just going to bounce right off a double digit’s hide. To top it all off, they’re useless during an incursion in a megacity. Not much fighting on the ground level.”
“So they bought dozens of tanks and found out they were useless.”
“’zactly. Stalking Tigers PMC set their tanks up in a bunch of smaller towns like this, where tanks are still effective, so they could put less boots on the ground. The ones here don’t move anymore, but they pack a punch against the single digits.”
I frowned. I had thought it was a tank that bored a hole in that Model Fifteen earlier, but was I mistaken?
“Then how are you dealing with the double digits? Has Alana been killing them all?” Haverson teetered his hand back and forth.
“Eh, sort of. See, she bought us some pallets of samurai-tech ammo. Suddenly those paperweights are actually useful, as long as she keeps giving us more shells.”
That was probably a huge point drain, but I didn’t see the point in asking. I doubted Haverson knew much about that side of things. Instead…
“How’d she become a samurai, anyway? If any soldier could be one, we’d have whole PMCs full of them.”
Haverson took a moment to finish his meal, then sat back.
“Well, I wasn’t there, but word is, the LT shoved a grenade down a Six’s throat. With her bare hands. Still had an arm in the thing’s gullet when the frag popped.”
“She still has two arms.”
“Samurai are bullshit.”
I didn’t have an argument for that, because samurai are in fact bullshit.
“So, what about you? New samurai’ve always got a great story.”
“I…stopped an attack on a bus with my car. And then blew it up. The car, I mean. Killed the last one.”
“That’s actually pretty tame for a samurai. Unless…?”
“…I was in the blast radius. The Three was gonna kill me anyway, so I figured hell, why not?”
“Damn! That’ll do it. Never heard of a samurai that didn’t almost die getting the title.”
After that, the conversation petered out. I’m sure there were more important questions I could have asked, but Alana was right. I was exhausted. My batteries were almost out and I couldn’t think of the right things to ask. I decided to go straight to my room while I still had a bit of energy left in me- I still needed to sort my gear out before tomorrow.