After I escorted Hel to the door, and saying my polite goodbyes, I turned and eyed Helen, who hadn’t followed her out.
“Can I help you with something else?” I asked sarcastically.
“Actually, yes. I wanted to discuss the situation a little more,” Helen replied, completely unphased. “We both did.” She said, gesturing to Sharron.
I raised an eyebrow at the other woman, who just nodded. “Fine, it better be important,” I muttered.
While we were standing around, Jane finally emerged from the back. She froze as soon as she saw who was with me. “Out!” she hissed, pointing at the garage.
“I know, I know, we’re going,” I replied as I led the other two women to the garage.
“What was that about?” Helen asked as she followed me into the cavernous space.
“You,” I grumbled. “If you MAY remember, you had your minions kidnap my little brother a couple months ago, and, surprisingly, my family hasn’t exactly forgiven you.” I stopped in the middle of the area and leaned on one of the deactivated bears. “Neither have I,” I scowled.
“Well… when you put it that way, I’m surprised you even let me inside in the first place,” Helen replied sheepishly.
“I didn’t exactly have a ton of choices. I literally wasn’t informed that you were coming until you were right outside my door. Hel had obviously come a long way to talk to me, so I wasn’t going to kick you out the instant you arrived… but there’s nothing preventing me from doing it now, so stop pretending you’re sorry and tell me what you really want,” I snapped.
Helen’s apologetic look fell away, and her face returned to her regular, slightly cocky expression. “If you insist.” She turned, found a nearby piece of junk, and sat down. “So you heard from Hel that the Family is split, right? Some still want to support the corporations, but not all?” I nodded slightly, unsure where she was going with this. “Well, Sharron and I kind of represent the second group.”
I turned my judging gaze on Sharron. “Hey, don’t look at me like that,” she said defensively. “It’s just our goals aligned with each other. There are actually a few samurai that agree with us. We were just the only two that had the time to come talk to you.”
“You could have come alone,” I told Sharron. “You didn’t need to bring her!”
“I volunteered,” Helen explained. “I figured that if I came all the way to talk to you, it might impress upon you how dire the situation was.”
“So… what IS the situation? What exactly do you want?” I asked.
“To recruit you to our side!” Helen chirped. My eyes narrowed, and I fought off the urge to sick my bears on her.
“What she means is,” Sharron started, stepping between Helen and me. “While some of the local samurai seem content to support the existing regime, a lot of us don’t give a shit about the corporate board.”
“Okay…” I said slowly. “You have my attention.”
“Even though some of the city's defenses completely rely upon the corps for funding or supply, not all of them do. We want to figure out ways to augment, or improve, those autonomous defenses so if worst comes to worst we can still protect the people without the corps’ direct intervention,” Helen explained.
“Is that even possible? I thought the board ran everything?” I asked.
“They direct the city’s policies and collect the taxes to keep things running, but they don’t control everything. There are hundreds of smaller corps in the city. The Green Edge, for example, supplies the majority of food to the city, but their profits are tiny compared to the large conglomerates,” Sharron said.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
“And it’s a good thing too. Since the sabotage focused on the board, things like food, water, and power have remained completely uninterrupted the last few months,” Helen added.
“So what’s your plan? Rely upon these smaller corps to pick up the slack?” I asked.
Helen shook her head. “No, we’d probably just end up in the same place in the long run, with defenses that directly rely on specific corporate entities. We want a secondary defense grid independent from them.”
“How…” I asked. “The amount of time and resources to set something like that up would be… exorbitant.”
“Believe it or not, we have a pretty good start. Barricade pushed an ordinance through a few years ago forcing all new buildings to have both power connections and foundations for AA guns on their roofs. He had a crew going around building these installations twenty-four-seven. Low caliber stuff, but effective against smaller models. In addition to that, the Family has data connections to all the big guns in the city. It’s not supposed to be direct control, only status updates,” Sharron explained.
“And it was… until Zetta and Bright-Eyes spent the last forty-eight hours doing some light… system updates,” Helen said with a smile.
My eyes narrowed again. “Is that legal?”
Sharron smiled. “According to the city? All major installations should be controlled by the board, but what they don’t know won’t hurt them.”
“So… Why do you need me?” I finally asked. “I’m sure you were aware that I’d be an easy sell on this plan of yours, even before you showed up. I don’t want to see innocent people die, but you must have come to me for a reason.” I glanced between the two women. “What is it?”
Sharron sighed. “We have plenty of automated aircover, but we still need to rely on the PMCs to isolate the incursion; we don’t have any ground units of our own,” she explained.
“And I do,” I finished. “I already committed seven hundred bears to the defenses, isn’t that enough?” I asked.
“Honestly? Probably not, we’d need enough forces to completely surround the incursion, and the city had over two thousand troops, along with several hundred armored vehicles, and even a half-dozen super-heavy tanks to back them up. What we were worried about was you didn’t give up control of the bears to the Family, or city, did you?” Helen asked.
I stared at the woman for a long moment. “Even if I could do that, I never would. The bears are connected directly to me and my commanders,” I said. “Why the fuck would I give up control to someone else?”
“I told you!” Sharron smirked.
“We had to be sure!” Helen shot back. “So can we rely upon you to back us up if things go south?” Helen asked.
“I would have deployed the bears even if you hadn't asked,” I assured her.
“Great!” Helen smiled—maybe the first real smile I’d ever seen her make. “Then we’re not in great shape, but at least we have something. I’ll send you an invite to the discussion group, so you can see who’s involved and keep track of the initiatives.”
I gave her a small smile in return, “Grand.”
The three of us stood there, in uncomfortable silence, for a long minute. “Well… I should probably get out of your hair and check in with the others. Thanks for your support, Teddy, I appreciate it,” Helen finally said.
She started heading back towards the residence, so I grabbed her wrist. “Not that way,” I said, as I pulled her towards one of the garage doors. I politely waved goodbye when she stepped out, and the instant the door closed, I turned on Sharron. “Explain what just happened here,” I snapped. “Why did you bring her here?”
“Making sure we had a complete defensive grid we could access separate from the Board was her idea,” Sharron said. “And she’s been the one pushing everyone to get it done.”
“Why?” I asked suspiciously.
Sharron shrugged. “Who knows? Remember how she was afraid that an incursion could hit the undercity before and that she wouldn’t be able to contain it? Maybe this is some sort of extension of that? At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter too much why. She’s had some good ideas, and by implementing them, the city’ll be a safer place,” she explained. “Honestly, I volunteered to talk to you alone, but she insisted on coming. I was actually a little surprised that you didn’t just immediately kick her out.”
“I was confident I could handle her if she tried anything, so there was no reason to kick her out immediately,” I said.
Sharron smirked. “You bonded a little during your last adventure, didn’t you? You straight up hate her, like you do Mirage.”
“That has more to do with Mirage than Helen!” I insisted. “Seriously, if the man didn’t push his agenda every fucking time I saw him, I probably wouldn’t have such a big issue with him.”
“Uh huh,” Sharron said, not looking at me. I couldn’t help but notice her smirk was a little wider.
“Whatever, just tell me more about these initiatives. Since Hoppy and I have to check all those emplacements for Hel, I might as well see if there’s any way to double dip.”