I pointed my gun at the door at where I guessed the thug's head would be when the door opened.

Already, we could hear someone banging against the door trying to break it down from the other side. Guess they must have figured that the old man was hiding here.

The old man pressed his back against the wall beside the door, his finger hovering over the control panel that would unlock the door and open it.

I timed the sound of the bangs and grasped my gun firmly.

The moment I heard another bang on the door, I nodded at Old Man Steri and he immediately tapped on the control panel which prompted the door to slide open.

The thug behind the door had just swung forward at the door, only for his pipe to meet empty air and for the thug to fall over into the room.

His comrade behind him was just as surprised as he was but got even more surprised when he realised that there was someone inside the room pointing a gun at him.

Before he could even react, I had squeezed the trigger and shot him in the head, killing him instantly.

I then immediately shifted my gun downwards and shot the first guy who was still on the floor in the head, killing him as well.

I then rushed out of the door, ramming my shoulder into one of the thugs who tried to peek inside the room to see what was going on and levelled my gun to point at the opposite side of the corridor, finding the last thug with his mouth open in shock.

He was so surprised that his gun was still held at his side and he couldn't react in time before I shot him in the chest twice.

I then crashed onto the ground with the thug I rammed into, both of us rolling to our knees at the same time.

He tried to point his gun at me so I slapped his hand away with the back of my wrist, the gun going off and the bullet flying wide.

I then pointed my gun at him from my hip and fired two shots, the first penetrating his side and the second one puncturing his chest, the plasma burning a hole at where they struck.

The thug looked at me with wide eyes before toppling over, joining his other companions on the ground.

I let out the breath that I didn't realise I was holding and stood up, sucking in another breath before breathing out.

The old man poked his head out from the room, "Wow… I didn't think you could actually do it. You're a Gold Merc or something?"

I raised an eyebrow, "If you didn't think I could do it, why did you accept my help?"

He pulled out a gun from under his jacket to show me, "I figured that you could at least take one or two of them down and I would be able to deal with the remaining ones myself. Or just shoot them while they were distracted by you."

So he was basically using me as bait… Well whatever. Can't say I don't understand where he's coming from.

"Anyway, you a Gold Merc? I'll pay your usual rates."

"No, I'm a Copper actually."

He blinked at me for a short moment before pointing a finger at the dead thugs, "You expect me to believe that a Copper Merc could take out all four thugs like they were no big deal?"

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What's so hard about it? Just point your gun and shoot. Did that plenty of times in the game already where I had to blow through hordes of enemies by myself so four guys aren't even that many.

Instead of telling him that though, I just shrugged at him, "I had experience before becoming a Merc. Only just signed up as one like less than a month ago."

"Hmm… In that case let me add some bonus on top of your rates then."

He took out a Credit Chip and plugged it into his personal terminal before I received a notification on my Codex that a sum of five thousand Credits had been transferred into my Codex.

That much just for killing four guys? Neat.

"So what's up with these guys? Why are they even after you?" I asked.

He raised an eyebrow, "Why do you care?"

I gave him a look, "I dunno, maybe because I almost got involved in it as well and now that I killed them, I may find myself involved in it?"

He clucked his tongue, "Tch… Fair enough… You're really unlucky to be involved in this by the way. Though I guess I could say the same for myself. Now why don't you go outside and grab a seat? I need to disable the self-destruct sequence on the decoder."

I blinked, "You… Have a self-destruct sequence on that machine… And you set it up to blow?"

"Of course. I wasn't going to leave anything to chance around here. In case both of us end up dying to them, I at least have to make sure those fuckheads can't use my machine."

"Why is it that important anyway?"

He sighed, "Just go outside, I'll be with you in a minute."

I shrugged and did as he asked, stepping outside the store to wait for him.

Unfortunately, there was only one chair outside and it was the one the old man had been sitting on just now so I just leaned myself against the wall to wait for him.

That was when my Codex started beeping, indicating I was receiving a call from someone.

I tapped on it to see it was Amber that was calling me and quickly tapped on the answer button to take the call.

The screen changed to show her face and she grinned upon seeing me, "Hey beautiful~ Just finished up my stuff here. What about you?"

"Err… Finishing up I would say. Though I guess I met with some unexpected problems."

She stared at me through the screen and her face shifted to a serious one, "What problems?"

"Well… There's apparently some gangs having a war here and one of them came over to attack the old man. He hired me to get rid of them and well… I'm waiting for him to explain the situation to me I guess?"

"Sit tight, I will be right there. Send me your location."

"Eh? Oh, you don't have to, Amber. I already dealt with them. I just want to know what's going on with the two gangs."

"Let me come as well, Tera. Send me your location."

She sounded really desperate for some reason so I just shrugged and did as she asked. She then promised that she would be right there and hung up quickly.

Right as I closed the window of the call, the old man appeared at the entrance, puffing on his pipe and looking more tired than he did when I first met him.

"Sigh… I'm getting too old for this shit… Sit down, girl."

I looked at the only chair that was around pointedly.

He noticed and waved his hand, "I'll stand, need to give my legs a stretch anyway. Go on."

I sat down.

He took another puff from his pipe before nodding at the dead bodies inside his store, "Know who they are?"

"Nope, like you said, I'm a tourist."

"Hmph… There's two main gangs on this station. Many other small ones but they aren't significant enough or related to this. Anyway, those guys over there belong to a group that call themselves the Freedom Elites. Opposing them are a group that's simply known as the Militant Faction. Wanna make a guess why they're at each other's throats?"

I shrugged, "I dunno. Something about law and order maybe?"

He huffed, "Pretty close. Freedom Elites want the military to have less influence on the station. Specifically on deciding the market because they still keep an eye out for the really illegal stuff like drugs and shit and would come down quite heavily on anyone found with them. Then there's the Militant Faction who want the military to stay and even enforce more order here but in reality, they're just the military's guard dogs in the station since they have their hands full with taking care of pirates."

"And this war started because…"

"Because of the pirate raid, the military had to mobilise everyone to take part in it and the Freedom Elites fuckers thought that this was the best chance for them to start a coup and take over the station. Obviously that resulted in a war between the two sides."

Ah… Is it my fault? No, definitely not. Since the pirates would have attacked anyway..

"How are you involved in this then?" I asked.

"Miss, for people like us, the best outcome is to maintain the status quo. So to help the Militant Faction regain some control and push back against these bastards, I helped them decode a locked military stash of weapons. I'm guessing you can piece the rest together yourself."

Oof… Yeah, I see now… The Freedom Elites then want to look for the old man for payback and also take the machine for themselves as well.

Geez, here I thought all I had to worry about was what I was going to make for dinner tonight…