Interlude - A Roaming Raccoon's Reasonable Relationships [Part Three]

Rac was growing to really love the Barber Shop. The little club was... nice. The music was weird and old, but it was still catchy. She wasn’t sure what to think of all the people dressed as animals. That wasn’t her thing, but they were mostly nice, and she... fit in?

Yeah, that’s how she decided to put it. She fit in.

“Hey! You’re here,” Garter said. He was smiling, and Rac found herself suddenly a little nervous, at least until she shoved it down.

The others were in the same booth as Garter. Jerusalem was splayed out across the table, eyes on an old-school tablet, and Coco was sitting half in and half out of the booth. It was a little too small for her to fit into normally.

“Hey,” Rac said. She slipped in next to Garter, very aware of when her hip bumped into his. “We have a job?”

“We do,” Garter said.

Rac got a ping in her aug, and she connected to the team’s chat. It let her see that there had been some discussion going on that she’d missed. Most of the speaking was Jerusalem, though.

Spider: Hello, Rac.

Spider: We have a job.

“What’s the job?” Rac asked.

“Hey, calm down,” Coco said. “Let’s get something in you first. You look like you haven’t eaten anything in a week.” Coco raised a hand, gesturing to one of the servicers. She got a wave back, and soon enough a small wheeled robot with a touch-screen to order on rolled over. “I’m starving,” Coco said as she started to punch an order in.

“While Coco gets us snacks,” Garter said with a laugh. “Did you hear the news? About the samurai contract?”

“No?” Rac said. She’d been a little busy today. That morning she’d run into Lucy, and the rather intense girl had asked Rac if she could help them print out some more prosthetics. Rac didn’t mind. She needed to print out some more ammo for her gun anyway, and the printer could do multiple things at once if it was loaded right. It had been a busy, but quiet, morning.

Garter grinned. “Right, right, so it’s big news in the merc circuit, at least here. Story goes that someone stole from a samurai. One of the mid-listers, you know?”

“Okay,” Rac said. That... happened, sometimes. It was like people didn’t know any better. It wasn’t smart to punch upwards, but people did it anyway.

Garter nodded along. “So, samurai tracks them down, but the trail goes cold. So they give up, right?”

“That’s weird,” Rac said.

“Yeah, a samurai’s like a dog with a bone,” Coco said.

“Anyway, instead of going after the stuff themselves, they put out a contract. And that’s where it gets interesting. See, they didn’t put money on the line, they put points.”

Spider: Not enough of them.

“Any amount is a lot,” Garter said. “That’s like paying in... gold, or something even more valuable. Anyway, every merc worth their salt’s jumping on the contract. Mostly the solos.”

“Why the solos?” Rac asked.

“Can’t split the pay well,” Coco said. “It’s twenty points. That’s like... four top-end guns? Depends on what you’re wanting to get. But yeah, if your crew’s big, how do you split that? Does the whole crew get one thing they need to share?”

“Oh,” Rac said.

“Ah, but our crew had four members,” Garter pointed out. “Hey, Spider, twenty divided by four?”

Spider: Are you fucking kidding me?

Spider: It’s 5.

Garter laughed. “Five more than any of us would ever get to play with.

Spider: I’ve seen what you can buy

Spider: for five points

Spider: It’s not much

“Then I’ll take your five, if you don’t want them,” Garter said. “Let’s call it five hundred credits?”

Spider: Fuck off.

“So, we’re taking this job?” Rac asked. She wasn’t sure if it was worth it for her. What could she get for that kind of reward? Her gun was probably worth a few dozen points, maybe? She wasn’t sure how that kind of stuff worked out.

“We’re definitely taking the job,” Garter said. He glanced up as a serving bot came over with a tray and slid it on the table. There were several burgers on it, fries, some drinks. Coco rubbed her hands together, then pushed one of the burgers towards Rac.

“Eat,” she ordered.

“Spider, privacy?” Garter asked.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

Spider: I’ll do what I can.

There was a faint whine, and Rac tried not to wince as her augs flickered. Spider was doing some hacker stuff to disable coms and recordings. It was a pretty typical move on his part. He said it wasn’t ideal, but it would stop low-level spying.

“So, Spider and I have been on the case since the news dropped,” Garter muttered conspiratorially.

Rac grabbed her burger and started eating. It was good. Hot and meaty and filled with the Barber Shop’s secret sauce, which was really sweet. “Mhm?”

“Yep. And we’ve discovered something.”

Spider: I discovered something.

“Right, right,” Garter said. “We think we know where the goods are. Sunrise Technologies is this low-level corp. Place is owned by nobody, who’s owned by nobody. You know the kind of place. They’re really big into grabbing discarded samurai tech.”

“They’re the ones that stole from the samurai? What was taken anyway?” Rac asked.

“Prosthetics,” Garter said.

Rac choked on her bite.

“Whoa, you okay?” Coco asked. She pushed a soda across the table, popped the tab open, then put an all-plastic straw through it. “Drink this, let it out, girl.”

“I’m fine,” Rac said with a few more coughs. “Wrong pipe.”

“Don’t do that on a mission,” Garter said. “I remember once, I think Coco swallowed a mosquito. Nearly died.”

“Not from the choking, it was from every damned guard turning on me all at once. It’s why you should wear a mask on ops. Not just to hide your ID, you know?”

Rac nodded along while her mind raced. Prosthetics? Sure, a lot of samurai had artificial limbs. There were some weird ones out there. And she’d heard Cat mention that Deus Ex, who looked normal, was actually just sending clones out, so there was stuff like that too.

But how many samurai were dealing in prosthetics outside of personal use, in New Montreal, right now?

Rac only knew one, and Cat was the lazy type. She’d definitely pay off some mercs to do her work for her. “S-so, this mission, we’re taking it?”

“Definitely,” Garter said. “Grapevine says that only a few of the bigger merc companies are moving in, and most of the solos are still damned clueless. They don’t have a Jerusalem to help them figure things out.”

Spider: Compliments won’t save you.

“You want in too?” Rac asked Jerusalem. The meshrunner shrugged his leather-clad shoulders.

Spider: I don’t care too much about the pay on this one

Spider: The rep tho

Spider: It’s good for us.

“Plus, we’d be getting on the good side of a samurai,” Garter said. “I heard that it might be the same chick that blew the mayor’s head off.”

“Yeah,” Rac said. They’d met Cat already, but they hadn’t put two and two together yet. That might change with this mission. She’d have to do damage control at some point, wouldn’t she?

Rac supposed that the reputation boost was worth it, though, and in a way it was her doing a favour for Cat. She was already sleeping in Lucy’s house--Cat had set aside a little room for her, same as the orphans they kept, and Rac had never felt safer than when she slept there. She wanted that to continue, because a rent of nothing with free food and ammo and electricity was something no one smart would pass up.

“You in?” Garter asked.

“I’m in,” Rac said. She took another bite of her burger to hide her expression while Garter cheered and patted her on the back.

Coco was in too, of course. The big woman was wondering aloud about the kinds of stuff she could get for the reward Cat was offering. Rac tuned them out a little. This was... good.

Yeah, it was good. She’d have Cat owing her a tiny favour, and that'd make it less likely that she’d get kicked out the moment she wasn’t needed anymore. That was good.

Jerusalem might have been trying to hide it, but he was just as excited as Garter as the two started to strategize. There was nothing for Rac to do yet, not for a while. She might be sent ahead to scout, but that would only be later.

She looked over her team, and hoped that they wouldn’t freak out too much if they learned that she knew a samurai, and that she’d introduced them already.

“I hope we get to meet them!” Coco said. “I’ve always wanted a samurai to sign my tits.”

Rac sighed. No, no, she was screwed.

***