Chapter 19

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‎ It’d been less than 12 hours since his raid on BioPharm’s regional drone control antenna array. It was already trending through several news agencies. He had them all playing in static hovering overlays and mounted to the 4 tv screens hung from his ceiling as he sat on his couch. The guts of his pistol spread out next to him on a towel. He was working on cleaning the grip and scrubbing off the carbon build up as he glanced up between each different overlay sets to a different news station. He blocked the entire day out to be a lazy day, taking some time to rest and recover from his excursion last night.

Setting the grip down, he picked up the spring and a half dirty rag with bits of carbon and grime smeared on it, getting to work on cleaning the dark goop off the spring when his implant signaled an incoming call. He reached into space and pressed the accept button, and flicked the call window to an empty portion of air.

“Jon,” Raven said.

“Raven,” he perked up, not expecting her to check in with him.

“I see your handiwork all over the news again. It’s nice to see you hitting your stride again.”

He shifted as he continued his cleaning. “It almost went pear-shaped pretty easy,” he said, recalling the explosion that tore his rappel rope free of the antenna array’s rooftop. Without his augmentations, he might have lost his grip and fallen to his death. The thought set his skin crawling. That he wouldn’t have been able to get this far without them sat wrong with him. He could appreciate the effectiveness and efficiency. What did that say about him, though? Was he less without them? Was he right in feeling like he was less human now? The thought left a sour taste in his mouth mentally. Then there was the whole matter with the Oraclehelix AI.

“Jon?”

He looked up at Raven, “Huh? Sorry.”

She shook her head in the small comms window. “You spaced out there for a second. Everything ok?”

He nodded, pulling his mind back to the conversation. “Just thinking.” He shook his head. “You were saying?”

“I asked why things went off rails.”

“Oh, the array facility’s structure was a little weaker than I’d thought. The anchor point for my rappel line blew out and I slammed into the opposite building’s side,” he said. Dropping his gaze to his hands and flexing them. The tiny servos whirring like little mechanical whispers. Machines upon machines that responded to the will of flesh.

“Without the augmentations, I might have died. Could have lost my grip and fell.”

“But you didn’t,” Raven said.

“No, I didn’t,” he agreed.

“Well, you sufficiently crippled BioPharm’s combat coordination capabilities in the area. The damage to that dish was extensively thorough. It’ll be a year or more before they get it back up and operational.”

“They’ll just piggy back off of Haltech’s network,” he added dismissively.

“True, but they’ll suffer degraded performance and output. They are also exposed to jammers and runners now. Leaving you in a better position to act tactically against them.”

“Yeah.”

She canted her head at him, “You ok? You’re sounding far off right now.”

He nodded, then hesitated. Was he really ok? Then he shook his head no, second guessing his gut reaction to just brush it off and play it ok. “No. I saw something,” he said. Looking up to face her in the comm overlay.

“Saw what, Jon?”

“Sam. But not Sam.”

“What do you mean?”

“While I was in their network, something happened, and then next thing I knew, I was in a memory of Sam before he died, but not Sam. Was something else.”

“Something?” Raven said, “Not Someone?”

“Not technically, no. It was an AI. A Haltech AI. Calls itself Oraclehelix.”

Raven frowned, glancing off screen for a moment to run several searches on the name. “What did this Oracle want?”

“To hire me for biz.”

“What kinda biz?”

“Wants me to sack Haltech HQ.”

Raven blinked. “Just like that?”

“Didn’t lay a plan out. Just the bullet points. Raze Haltech HQ tower,” Jon said.

Raven ran a hand through her dark hair as she leaned back in her chair. “I don’t like it.”

“Proly not the best time to bring up the fact it wants to merge with its brother AI that’s helping run Haltech?”

Raven just stared at him blankly and shook her head, “No. No, it was not. Do you even know what would happen? There are reasons they have forbidden full fledged AI this far. If that thing merges with its other half, there’s no telling what will happen. It would be Great Collapse all over again.”

Jon shook his head. “I dunno. Using it to bust into Haltech doesn’t sound like the best option either. But then again, it would let me kick Haltech square in the dick.”

“Fuck no it doesn’t,” Raven said. “Jon, please tell me you don’t plan to help that thing?”

“Not a single inch. I’m not doing shit to help Haltech. Even if its to help their AI fuck them over.”

Raven’s brow furrowed, and she shook her head. Her lips moved subtly as she muttered through a one-way conversation he couldn’t quite pick up. She glanced up and shook her head. “Anything else?”

He leaned back, “Well, I hallucinated Sam and Polanco. I think.”

Raven fell silent for a moment. “I see.” She said. Raven hesitated before searching for a more diplomatic way to approach her next question. “Is this the first time that’s happened?”

“Yea.”

“What happened when you saw them?”

He shook his head, being stubborn about opening up and not wanting to let her in.

“Jon, I’m on your side, but I can’t help if you lock me out. Tell me what happened.”

He sighed finally, giving in. “I was in the antenna facility and found a security terminal. I was having second thoughts about hacking it. I didn’t want to expose myself to their tech. I remember what it’s like when that goes sideways for the user.”

Her brows furrowed. “Tell me about it?”

Jon’s expression twisted with torment. “It happened in Kharkiv, close to the Russian border. A local hacker and slicer was working on a Russian network when the SVR detected him. They back hacked his augment and then forced him to execute himself with his own pistol. Shot his brains out, and couldn’t even stop it.” He paused, the image of the man’s face in absolute horror and panic as he struggled to keep from lifting the pistol to his head and the inexorable squeeze of the trigger until the pop of the round sounded, immediately followed by his death, along with the destruction of any data he got. It didn’t happen to Jon, and yet he felt powerless to stop it.

“Ah. And you were afraid that could happen to you?” Raven asked, a tone of understanding in her voice.

He gave her a north-south of his head. “Yeah.”

“And that’s when you saw Sam and Polanco?”

“Yeah,” again.

“Sounds like maybe you were giving yourself a kick in your own ass. Pushing yourself to get over your shit so you could do the job.”

“That’s what I been telling myself.”

Her brow crooked, “So why do I feel like there’s a but coming?”

“But I don’t feel like I got a right to have fears like that. This mission is too big for little shit like that to get in the way. Too big for me to fold up like that,” he said.

She smiled, and he felt himself bristle at that. What was there to smile about? Did she think he was funny? Or stupid?

“Jon. All this time you were worried about if you’re human or not, and here you are still acting like one. You can’t just shut down your own fears and traumas just because you’re lugging around a rucksack full of guilt. You’re doing right by Sam and Polanco as it is. That’s been your core focus. Not letting their deaths be meaningless. But be careful about being willing to sacrifice pieces of yourself to this fight just to accomplish that. They wouldn’t want you to sell yourself short just to win this or it would wind up being your sacrifice, and who would make yours have meaning if not yourself?”

“And, if it helps, Polanco is doing better. He’s been hard to reach lately. I’m guessing as part of his company’s response to the Toranaga hit,” she said. A contemplative expression creased her brows.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

That was a relief, even if he couldn’t show it outwardly. He sighed and shook his head. Even though a lot of what she said had sunk its talons into the folds of his mind, lingering there. He desperately wanted for a distraction of some type. “So, what did you call about? I know it wasn’t to puff up my ego or comment on my demo skills.”

Raven nodded once with a reluctant sigh. She looked like she wanted to press the topic, but knew well enough to take the hint. “I wanted you to head to Roth today. After you swatted the wasp nest, I have a feeling they’ll be in a frenzy, and looking to respond. Roth and Doc Preston will probably need your help.”

He set the last cleaned piece of the pistol down on the towel. “You think they’ll retaliate directly?”

Raven nodded, “I’ve been looking over their comms traffic and there is a lot of chatter, both at BioPharm and around it. You’ve got them riled up, and I have a strong hunch they’ll come for blood. Look here,” she said. Raven swept an overlay to him that came over as an image download. He pulled it up and saw a satellite map of BioPharm’s HQ office. One side showed the company a few days ago during normal hours, and then another showed it this morning after his raid on the antenna facility. The afterimage was swimming with activity. The activity that usually preceded a movement to attack.

“Well, they aren’t trying to hide it.”

Raven shook her head. “No, and Roth seems to be aware of it. But I have doubts about their ability to repel the attack. They could really use your help, Jon.”

He ran his artificial hand through his hair. The hand felt cool to his forehead, like Death’s own touch. The haptic feedback nearly resembled what he remembered hair felt like. Or was that some kind of neural ghost in the machine? A memory that replayed itself on a physical trigger. Raven thought he was still acting human, but he was more worried about feeling human. But he was letting himself get distracted again. Could he help? Sure. Should he help? That was the question.

“What happens if BioPharm hits Roth, and the company folds?”

Raven’s expression went serious. “If Roth folds, the likelihood is that Haltech would absorb their assets. That would give them the market share in cybernetics and augmentation development, implementation and research on top of their growing military industrial complex programs. Sweeping legislation restricting access to military level hardware and augmentations would fly through overnight, and your fight against them will have gotten a lot harder.”

He didn’t much like helping a massive tech corporation. But letting Haltech bloat more was even less ideal with him than that. He let out a slow sigh and then nodded. “Ok. When do I need to move by?”

“Now,” Raven said, flicking him another overlay. BioPharm’s remaining human black hat forces were on the move and they were packing some heat. “Go in hot and do it now.”

In a blur, he reassembled the pistol and ran a functions check before sliding it into his holster. “On it.” He swiped the news overlays off, and then stood up, Raven’s portrait following him as he marched for his gear in the next room over. He turned to Raven, who gave him a nod.

“Good luck.”

He swiped the call, ending it. Getting to work throwing his combat vest on, then selected an assault rifle, fishing out spare loaded magazines to tuck into pouches on his vest. Loading the last of his gear up, he took a moment to inspect everything and run through a checklist. He wanted to make sure he had what he needed to get started. Satisfied, he rushed to the car and raced for Roth’s Corporate HQ office.

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Roth Corporate HQ 30 minutes later ...

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‎ Jon’s black sedan screeched to a halt, the nose of the car angling towards the curb. He threw the door open and surveyed the scene. Local authorities had put out the public notice that scrolled through all public information outlets across all implants, and the message plastered itself on his hud as soon as he entered the effective shelter-in-place area.

“PUBLIC SAFETY ALERT

The Public Safety Officer of the Capital City Police Department has issued a shelter-in-place order for ROTH INDUSTRIES EMPLOYEES AND SURROUNDING VICINITY, effective 10:00 a.m. Tuesday, February 22, 2100, to help prevent further casualties due to sanctioned corporate conflict. Authorized combatants only. All other personnel must adhere to the SIP order. For more information on the order, including exceptions for essential activities and FAQ’s visit www.ccdc.dc.gov/corpconflict.”

He swiped the message aside and took a knee. Ahead of him he could see eight black SUVs parked in a wedge formation blocking the street and providing the black hats cover to use against Roth’s defenders. He reached over and opened the passenger side door of his car, and shrugged his assault pack on, then removed his M-10, checking the mag was seated secure, and then racked a round. He took a moment to mark every black hat he could see before things degenerated into pure chaos. Better to track them now rather than later. When he was finished, every black hat working for BioPharm now had a red triangle over their head, marking their position in his hud.

He had the drop on their backs, but if he engaged them, he wouldn’t get the benefit of Roth’s black hats because of the cover BioPharm’s mercs were using. So his first goal was removing the vehicles as an advantage from them and give Roth’s defenders a chance to press them back. And he had to do it fast, as the black hats for Roth were dropping quickly.

He gave the SUV’s a solid look and then glanced around. He had a few options. None of them great. He could use his car, remote it right into one truck. That would deal with one, but leave him exposed. He could use his PEPS cannon, but he would broadcast his attack position while doing it. He could cluster the shot to hit the front and rear of two vehicles. That would tilt the situation back into a more manageable position. That just left him with needing to find a position to attack from after he made those two moves. The lack of options left him wanting to sigh. Of course, the square had to be one of those wide open corporate “green” projects where they planted flowers and grass and called that positive environment enhancement. He’d have to use one of the nearby shops then.

He selected the nearest storefront that had a metal shutter on its facade but provided cover he could use, in this case a waist high mini wall with small lamps on it that fed into the entrance of the shop. His mini-sat-map told him they connected this shop to Roth’s tower. Like a large root of a large oak tree spreading out, he marked the gunmen behind their vehicles in his hud, and then remotely connected into his car and primed his PEPS cannon. He’d never used the thing yet, and if he were honest with himself, wasn’t entirely sure about using it. In his hud interface, he primed the weapon, which folded his hand. The fingers folded back and his hand broke down into two large components as the forearm pieces contracted and spread apart to reveal the barrel of a weapon. A large charge coil began glowed slowly as the weapon drew power from his charge cell.

Once the weapon was primed, he fired. The barrel bucked hard as a blue orb of concentrated energy hurled itself from the muzzle. It slammed into the mass of trucks next to the corpo goons, sending them tumbling and rolling away as though Godzilla himself had just kicked them. Glass and metal shards went flying. Of note, so too did the gunmen behind the vehicles go flying. Many of them tumbling like angrily thrown ragdolls. The remaining vehicle and black hats looked around in confusion, their focus on Roth’s team faltering as they struggled to assess their situation. A few of them started pointing at him and started taking shots, using their protection behind their truck to keep Roth from hitting them while they tried to pin him down.

The incoming fire starting chipping and pecking away at the surrounding stone of the mini wall. He could feel bits of debris torn off from impacts striking his skin and bouncing off his arms. The affects registering as being pricked or needled. He deactivated the PEPS cannon and felt the components sliding back into their standard standby configuration. He flexed his hand a few times to ensure it was back to normal. Getting over the neural vertigo of having your hand telescope into a big gun and back took a moment. Satisfied after a few finger wiggles that his hand was indeed a hand again, he lifted the assault rifle up again and snapped off a few shots over the wall from behind cover. The volume of fire picked up as the BioPharm black hats laid it on thick. His stone wall was being hammered into tiny pieces of gravel at an alarming rate.

He cursed his luck when suddenly the suppressing fire against his position let up. Rifle fire from Roth’s entryway picked up, and he realized what had happened. The BioPharm black hats had gotten cocky and tried to walk him down and forgotten about the Roth team still at the entrance of the company, and now they were taking fire to their six. Jon risked a quick peek over his cover to confirm his hunch and sighed with relief to find he was correct.

Capitalizing on the momentum shift, he popped up from cover and snapped off several quick bursts, shifting targets the moment the current one rolled back on his feet to the next. In moments, the last of the men were down with serious wounds. Exiting his covered position with his rifle at the high ready, he marched his way slowly through the wreckage of the fight to link up with the black hat team lead from Roth. The man gave him a crisp nod, as Jon gave his name tape a quick once over.

“Talbot?”

“Correct. You must be the independent contractor the boss gave us heads up was coming.”

“You knew I was coming?” Jon asked, uncomfortable with feeling out of the loop. The last time that happened, he’d eaten a missile of point blank range.

“Yes, Sir. Anonymous tip to Mr. Roth. Codenamed Raven?” Talbot said, nonplussed with the source. “We’re just glad you showed up when you did. They were hitting us hard, even without their combat mechs.”

Jon nodded, his gaze distant for a moment. “Yea.”

“Big shame someone went and blew their antenna array all to hell. But it sure helped save our skin, so I’m good with it. Even if it got BioPharm jumpy enough to try a harebrained scheme like this.”

“So you thought this attack was a retaliation, too?” Jon asked, trying to hide his wince.

“It’s an educated guess. Their corporate sponsor is Haltech, and those goons have the lead in the military networks. Not a far stretch of imagination to make the conclusions. All the same? You have our thanks for the help.”

Before Jon could dismiss the gratitude, he got an incoming call from Raven. Holding a hand up apologetically to take the call, he looked away to speak, “Go ahead.”

“Jon, you’re not done yet. They’ve got more coming. Better bunker down.”

“Great,” he said. His voice dripping with irritation. He ended the call with no further preamble focusing on Talbot, “We’ve got a second wave incoming. What defenses do you have inside?”

Talbot appeared trapped between an expression of concern and amusement. Luring BioPharm in would tactically be the smart thing to do. But it would also provide BioPharm the chance to crack into their local network. If BioPharm got control of the defenses, that would be futile. He shook his head, shifting to grim resignation, and Jon knew he had a long fight ahead of him.

“We can lure them into the building, let the automated defenses go to work with us, but if they crack network access and breach our servers, we’re cooked.”

Jon glanced back to the carnage in the square. One of the SUV’s the BioPharm black hats used had been shot to hell on the side facing Roth’s doors. Two more lay on thier side and roof, respectively. All the ballistic proof windows shattered, and the armor crumpled like tissue paper. The last vehicle still had his car wedged into its side and surrounded by gunned down black hats. He could make a stand here. If he could use his cannon again, he could blast the incoming forces’ lead vehicle, cause disruption before they could execute a plan and try to keep the advantage for as long as possible. Whittle down their forces enough to give Roth a chance again.

“Is Dr. Preston in?” Jon asked.

Talbot nodded. “She’s secured in her lab. Why?”

“I have a question I need answered.” He primed the cannon again, his hand and arm folding back to reveal the cannon barrel, and Talbot smirked. “Nice. We just launched that series. So that’s what you used on those trucks. Let me guess, you spent your charge and need topped up again without waiting for the piezoelectric generators to recharge it for you?”

Jon shifted, uncomfortably lost in the technical jargon. “Er, yea.”

Talbot pulled out a foil wrapped cube and held it out to Jon. “Here. Eat this and the high protein volume will help the cell recharge, and step up your recharge rate. Should be enough to give you an edge for a bit.”

Jon eyed the cube hesitantly for a moment. He wasn’t sure how he felt about eating something like this. He regarded Talbot curiously, “This isn’t like drugs or anything, is it?”

Talbot bit back a chuckle before explaining, “Nah, it’s just highly condensed protein and nutrients. It’ll get your metabolism jacked without the jittery feeling. You’ll feel like a million bucks for a while. They designed it around, enhancing the output of the generators in your augmentations to help boost their power output to recharge spent power cells. Think of it like natural ether to get your engine running again.”

Jon grunted as he removed the wrapper and ate the cube. It tasted like clay, which left him wanting a drink of water to rinse it down. He tried not to look disgusted. “Well, I guess I can add that to my list of things to swallow without chewing.”

Talbot smirked, “Yea. They taste like shit, but they get the job done inside ya. Last I heard, Dr. Preston was working on flavored versions. No idea if they made it past the R&D phase, though.”

“Here’s hoping.” He turned to face the street, turning his back to Talbot. “You should get inside. I’ll hold them off for as long as I can. You have that long to stage a defense inside. That’s where we make the last stand.”

Talbot nodded, giving his men the signal to regroup, then faced Jon. “Good luck, and don’t do anything stupid.”

Jon turned to look over his shoulder with a nod. “No promises.”

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