Chapter 35: Corpo season Ganger season!

  “In some situations, the legality of who’s in charge of what, who you’re allowed to shoot, how much you can charge for protection, etc… becomes a fucked up mess. It’s bureaucratic fucking bullshit on top of non-sensical laws with a large helping of idiocy. It’s one of the shitty parts of corpo-sec.

  In the end though, checking who’s got the biggest gun solves most of those issues.”

  –Corpo-sec training session, Grey Sword PMC, Corpo-sec division, 2056.

  ***

  The mop up was going rather well. Johnny and I wouldn’t add a ton to search and rescue efforts. No, we were needed to get the fuckers shooting civilians out of the fucking place. “Altany, could you get me a stealth drone, please? Something they won’t notice…” A plan formed in my head now, slowly but surely. “Actually, I need it to have great hologram projection capability and very strong speakers…”

  Johnny Law stood on the other side of the door but understood what I wanted to do quickly! He smiled. “I’ll go over yonder, prepare for some good ol’ snipin’.” He said while tilting his head further back into the building. I nodded.

  That will cost extra, you will have to purchase a new catalogue for such.

  I shrugged. “Stealth reconnaissance drones or something, yeah.”

  Class 1 Stealthed Remote Piloted Drones unlocked!

  Points Spent… 100!

  New purchase: Concealed Universal Bot Scout Mark 6

  Points Spent… 350!

  I almost groaned at the name and the price. “Why?” I asked as the bot hovered out of its tiny box. It was… maybe the size of a baseball?

  You asked for expensive features, which meant there was space for a lot of inexpensive options in the design, not counting the addition of Mole-Bear alloys. I created a model that would survive extremely harsh environments, could help conduct search and rescue, would serve as an every day upgrade to the destroyed one I used for the avatar, had a lot of scanners and would serve for as long as possible without issues. In short, it is a rather all occasions model. For the name, just beclaws.

  I narrowed my eyes at the last pun but let it slide. Johnny Law laughed quietly on comms but I ignored him. “Didn’t notice the last drone getting destroyed. Remind me to get you a replacement next time, you seemed to like it.

  That is very kind of you. Now, for your plan. Also, do not kill this one.

  A single soldier became highlighted. “Really, why him?”

  ***

  Sergeant Gustav was fucking done with this fucking bullshit! Killing civilians? That’s askin’ a lot, but it paid well. Burning the bodies, he could understand that, sure as hell didn’t wanna go to jail. Doing that crap with a boss looking over his shoulder, all anxious and shit? That was too fucking much! He was about to tell him off when he heard something.

  “Please don’t shoot! Please! We’re unarmed!” Another fucking family of civies. Antithesis at least put up a fight… “Please!” A woman asked, begging. This sky bridge was damn long! They were twenty meters from the entrance, per instruction, and they had to stop any civilians from making it onto the sky bridge. This’d be tough one. They were near the passage, which meant they had to kill ‘em fast before the long-range drones could catch even a glimpse.

  “All of you, come on out!” He shouted through an ultra-directional speaker. The sound would get to the building but nowhere else. At least this fucking client wasn’t skimping on tech.

  “It’s alright, honey, just go to safety. Keep your hands up sweety.” The god damn kid first? Shit. If he shot her the others would never come out!

  “I said all of you! Come on out!” They were still waiting fuck’s sake, she was almost at the limit!

  “All of you! Come on out or we will fire!” That kid was walking quick, fuck!

  “Yes sir! We’re coming out!” They had to show their heads, bunch of assholes!

  An order came over comms. “Just shoot them for fuck’s sake she’s almost there!” He might have fucking hated the bastard, but fucker was right. The others were coming out, but not fast enough, they’d have to get them with grenades.

  “Fire” He showed by example by shooting the girl with his SMG before she could ruin everything!

  As al- What the fuck!? How was she over the line? He’d just shot her with, like, eight rounds! Of 45. ACP! Couldn’t have missed, right? Out of panic, he kept shooting! The girl was over the line fuck! God damn it she was out in the open… He emptied his mag, but…

  He felt like a fucking moron. It was a hologram. FUCK! Someone might have footage of that! Blackmail material or something!

  Then, an insanely loud sound boomed out! So loud he had to imagine there was a speaker as tall as him nearby! “Identify yourselves.” The boss screamed at him to shut off that noise. Sure, he would, if he knew where the fuck it came from!

  “We have the weaponry! You identify yourself!” A chuckle resounded extremely loudly, louder than their gunshots.

  “This is the Red, White and Black corpo-sec and clearing group. We are designated as both for this building. You are trespassing on corporate property. Identify yourselves or be fired upon.”

  The fucking sound was way too fucking loud! The boss was screaming in his ear tons of stuff. “That’s not the corpo-sec registered!” He shouted triumphantly. Another chuckle.

  “Check again buddy.”

  That fucker was too fucking calm! The skywalk was wide and solid enough, being anchored with a pillar on the side of the hexplate, that they’d brought god damn Mechs! They had Two Walking dual canon models with double barrels and explosive rounds! Plus, six guys in mechanically enhanced heavy armor! They packed massive guns! Add to that eighteen fucking infantry with SMGs and ARs! Fuck’s sake, no mall-cop or scavenger should be this calm!

  His boss went weirdly quiet in his ear, which wasn’t usually a good sign! He shut off his mic. “Who the fuck are these guys!?” He asked point blank. Fuck decorum with mister big and fancy, he felt properly done with this bullshit.

  “Th-They’re the… corpo-sec and clearing groups for the building… How?”

  He rolled his eyes. “Want me to fucking surrender?”

  That did the trick! “Kill them! Kill them right now!”

  “Oh, sure, if you can tell me where the fuck they are!”

  “Lower your weapons and prepare for searches. As you have refused to identify yourselves, you are now trespassers. As you have fired upon what you thought were civilian targets, by article 469 of the New-Montreal charter, all goods on your person are forfeit and you will be strip searched. If you refuse to lower your weapons in the next five seconds, your lives are forfeit.”

  This situation was way out of fucking control! He had to establish some kind of… dialogue or some shit! Right? “I’m Sergeant Gustav of Grey Sword Inc! We have been granted right to prevent exit of aliens from this building.” A few seconds later, he got an answer.

  “Your lives are now forfeit. So, Gustav, you’ve been granted right by who? You aren’t registered anywhere as far as I can tell. Also, attempted murder of Peach Trees’s minor population while on the premises is still plenty to get a dead or alive bounty issued on you, which, of course, we did. I’ll give your guys, which have also all been issued updating bounties, and you I guess, thirty seconds to put your weapons down. We might continue our discussion after that.”

  Who the fuck were these guys? They’d been hearing shooting from the building, more shooting than there was supposed to be, by a fucking longshot! Was there a clearing group in there, taking the place? It couldn’t be one samurai, too many sources! There hadn’t been enough xenos for a while, which unnerved the boss too, apparently.

  “We’ve been granted right by the board of directors, surrender to… hum imprisonment as we evaluate the situation and you will not be harmed…” It was weak. Real fucking weak and he knew it.

  “Oh, like that family? Twenty-three seconds buddy, nothing else you want to say? Maybe to keep you alive longer?”

  The guy was just to fucking calm! It fucked with his nerves! “Fuck you! Surrender or we will be in our right to open fire by the right of big guns you piece of shit!” That got a booming laugh that resonated in the night air.

  “Oh god, thanks, I needed that. See you in… let’s say fifteen seconds?”

  Wait, by his count, they were at eight? He raised his SMG, ready to fuck up some… whatever the fuck this was!

  “I warned you…” There was a quarter second without any change that left Gustav with an extremely short moment of hope. Then, the mechs started getting stripped!

  Shots started landing on the joints, high velocity rounds that hit way before the sonic boom hit! Every single fucking one went through armor like butter then blew up! It sounded like a fucking machine gun and hit like a sniper rifle! After both were disabled?

  Something stepped around the corner.

  ***

  After those mechs got disabled, I turned the corner and tested out a new configuration because why not?

  I put my left foot forward, opened my shield, deployed plates on the other side, and linked those two into a wedge made of my shield, left tibia and thigh armor and most of my right side-mounted plates!

  I had to upgrade some to add the ability to detach my arm from the shield, but it left me pretty damn well designed for deflecting projectiles while still being able to hold the stock of my shotgun!

  I shot very quick three round bursts at the infantry. Just super buckshot and normal velocity, nothing impressive. It gave me a damn great rate of fire though’! Perfect for staggering them, even killed a couple!

  Then I switched to staballoy hornet’s nest slugs at extreme velocities! I still got semi-auto from that. Not a super quick semi-auto, but plenty enough!

  I had my coprocessor, boosted reflexes and aim-assist module to help of course! Those slugs punched very deadly fucking holes in heavy-armor, allowing the needle to do even more damage! A few didn’t make it all the way in, but the assholes never survived a second shot.

  Then I took out all the infantry with assault rifles. Were they dangerous? Not really, but they’d be annoying. Might actually ruin a few plates depending on their ammo.

  After that, I aimed to make a point. A powerful one. Which was why I retracted everything, shield included, and got up!

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  They had a lot of SMGs, doing a whole lot of nothing to me. Most deflected or even bounced off. I strolled without concern, using high-velocity hornet’s nest slugs to take out the idiots at a leisurely pace. I kept taking fire. It sent a lot of kinetic energy my way, yes, but I’d invested in better kinetic gel for a reason.

  For the rest, I had fucking spikes on my boots! So, I kept on walking. I killed every fucker who moved forward or back. I’d seen their little demonstration with the holograms. Didn’t really have any pity in my heart at the moment, just wrath. Oh so much wrath…

  I arrived in front of Gustav and barely budged as he finished emptying his 45. ACP SMG into my chest plates. “So, fancy meeting you here.” I checked the time on my augs. “Sorry, my sweet Gustav, I believe I’m three seconds late.

  He got the message. It only took me a few seconds to destroy the entire team they’d built up. How long would it take me to kill him if he didn’t stop the annoying bullshit? “So, what’s the name of the company again?” I could feel him trembling in front of me. In the cold, dark air, under the rain, it felt kind of dramatic!

  “Hum… G-Grey Sword incorporated… Sir. I’m sergeant Gustav… mister” I smiled. “Coolsies! Now, are you going to explain why you fired on what you thought were fleeing, unarmed civilians.?” I asked conversationally. Altany wanted me to stall? I’d fucking stall.

  The poor man was under constant verbal assault from an exec! I could’ve probably heard what he said even without the super ears. For quite a bit, he kept his mic off. “No… No… are you fucking serious right now? No! I am not-fine, fine, fuck it…” He turned his mic back on.

  “Hum… You’re… Under arrest sir?” He didn’t sound very enthusiastic.

  I answered promptly. “Nop! Also, by what right? This was a completely justified shooting. There are no bounties out for Mad Panda and you showed lethal intent to the underage inhabitants of this building. What authority are you using to try and arrest me? Or, more to the point, who’s authority.”

  The poor fucker… actually no, I didn’t feel bad in the slightest. Quite the opposite! Still, he was stuck between something scarier than he’d ever seen and a machine that destroyed disposable PMCs without even a thought. As he kept scrambling, Altany dropped this little nugget.

  I am in. The viruses I uploaded through visual feed have reconstructed and opened ports. I am using my hold on his equipment and augs to backtrack his connection to the… Give me thirty seconds and the crisis is over.

  My eyebrows rose. I made sure to keep my speakers off and my animated eyes fixed and looming over the man. “What do you mean? Don’t we have like a dozen different systems to plug into and hack or something?”

  No. The person who is connected is a high ranking executive. Also, they are old. The connection is not properly secured on this end, as extra data can be sent without issues. I am sending some daemons and shou–

  SHIELD HEAD!

  I acted on instinct, some mine, others implanted. My coprocessor was already running and I pushed those quick muscles beyond my perception, damn the heat. I put my hands up and formed an armored wedge with my plates. The super plates Altany charged so much for went up to protect my face and were braced by parts of my pauldrons as more plates went up and my neck stiffened. What the…

  Everything went dark.

  ***

  Johnny watched in horror as the hit landed. Some kind of panel on the side of an armored vehicle on the other side of the sky bridge had opened and there was a flash. He could see the rain pulse away from the sonic boom in the wake of that projectile!

  Must’ve been some kind of anti-armor weapon. A railgun? Something like that. He didn’t return fire immediately because of the sight of his partner flying back!

  Mad Panda tumbled in the air, ass over teakettle! His legs hit the top of the doorway and he landed on his stomach!

  Johnny returned to his senses! If Mad died, ain’t nobody but him could finish the darn job. Nobody else would deliver justice! “Bytal, I need somethin’ to destroy that piece of shit…” He said, pretending his eyes weren’t even a bit blurry.

  That will be unnecessary.

  ***

  Gustav sighed. The order had come down at least. The anti-armor railgun did its job. He’d have liked some fucking warning! The high-velocity round’d hit differently than usual. What kind of fucking armor did this damn samurai have?

  It should have just pierced through! Too much power to do anything else! “Oh god, I’m glad that’s fucking dealt with. What’s the fallout for this? We shot a fucking samurai in the…”

  Gustav shut up as the samurai moved. He froze. How the fuck…

  The kid’s arms suddenly stabbed into the ground! Were those… handholds? Something assembled on his back? “Fuck!” He jumped to the side, sheltering against the railing before a sonic boom unlike anything he’d ever experienced hit him!

  ***

  I blinked. Something’d hit my head. Hard! Not my helmet, my fucking head! I’d blanked for a second and suddenly ended up on my stomach. I got shot?

  Yeah, seemed like I got shot. No idea by what though? “Altany? You alright?” I asked, stupidly worrying about the god level AI.

  Yes, I am. Thank you for the ridiculous worry. Your vitals are normal, you simply received a blow to the head. An anti-armor specific weapon was used. I suspect a railgun given the origin. To be clear, an actual railgun, not a coilgun.

  I snorted. However, I remembered that I was out in the open and that gunner might try a second time! “Altany, got a position?” I asked, doing a mental checklist.

  Yes, an armored vehicle. Well armored at that.

  “Is that floor evacuated?”

  Yes, it is.

  “Give me something hyper-sonic. Something that’ll destroy that thing, plus some grapeshot to spice things up. Don’t care about the cost, I’m a bit pissed.” I said, my teeth gritted. Wrath, not rage.

  Of course. Find something to hold onto. This will be rough, but you are in a perfect position to brace. Preparing to fire Mach 7 anti-friction coated hypercompressed grapeshot with kinetic strike slug version 4.2.

  In a hurry, I slammed vibro-blade claws into the ground, creating handholds. I did the same with my boots. I also planted every spike I could! Any blade that wouldn’t shatter from the force and even placed every plate I could to act as bracing!

  Altany had been right, of course, the shot kicked back hard! Even with all my preparations I moved back several centimeters and lifted slightly off the ground! Thankfully, I’d reinforced my gauntlets to hell before doing this! The pure strength of my arms wouldn’t have done that much!

  Since Altany was the best, she recorded the results to show me! It had to be long range observation, sadly, because of the sky bridge’s length! The projectile had plenty of time to accelerate, and so it did! Mach 7 was no fucking joke!

  Whatever intact windows were left on the sky bridge blew away! The projectile separated into a lot of smaller projectiles, smaller than last time. Needles? You wouldn’t guess from what happened to the soldiers it hit! What little percentage energy transmitted to the front of their armor did enough to make it fully buckle in!

  The hydrostatic shock looked impressive, resulting in a pretty pink mist! Along with quite a lot of viscera coming right after. Everyone hit flew back! The armored vehicle though…

  This wasn’t actually a pointed slug. It used some type of lightweight material for the tip, just to keep it aerodynamic until the end. The super-dense, cylindrical slug behind that appeared to be the real strike. Not made to penetrate, it’d act as a, well, a ‘kinetic strike’, its job to impart kinetic energy!

  And so it did! At first, the vehicle fully crumpled in and flew back, but it did break in two and some other PMC equipment got the same treatment behind it. Everything in the way of that slug just became shrapnel to cause more damage. Pure, absolute destruction!

  “Thank you Altany, that made me feel better.” I said with a smile as I got up.

  My pleasure.

  As I took a look at my armor, I noticed some damage on my collar and pauldrons. “What happened here?” I asked with confusion.

  The projectile shed a first stage upon contact with your first layer of defense. The wedge slightly changed its course, originally your forehead. Then it encountered your ‘stupid strong’ plate and could not penetrate it. The high-density penetrator core imparted large amounts of kinetic energy, deforming it and your collar. The bracings ended up being the weak points.

  The core barely made it past your helmet. If you did not have a reinforced skull, it may have slightly fractured and your nanites would have repaired the damage. If you had stronger bracing, It could have stopped inside the ‘stupid strong’ plate after imparting its energy.

  “How…” I wasn’t sure if I wanted to know…”How powerful was that shot?”

  It was an anti-armor, high-velocity railgun round. I suspect it was close to hypersonic. It would have defeated most of earth’s tanks.

  “Fuck me with a nailed baseball bat…” I’d just survived an anti-tank weapon meant specifically to penetrate large amounts of armor. I found the bent out of shape ‘stupid strong’ plate on the ground close to me. I almost died right there.

  Meh, not the first time.

  “Well, let’s replace that plate and all the ones that broke… also the weaker ones. I like the ‘stupid strong’ ones but let’s upgrade the rest? Something good against projectiles. I’m about to deal with a lot of guns. Make sure no assault rifle can get through. Safety first, but please keep cost in mind. Whole body, including those divisible plates. Now, let’s talk to our survivor…” I was still a bit miffed.

  “How’s the hack going?” I asked with growing wrath. It came back as I remembered what the assholes thought they shot during my little trick. I added plates as I listened to Altany’s explanation. My armor swelled a bit around me, some parts becoming bigger but equalizing as I added even more. Some old plates were discarded since they weren’t strong enough. I didn’t end up that much bigger by the end.

  As I was saying before we were interrupted, this executive is old. He is monitoring directly, using a desktop computer. The connection is not anywhere near secure enough, trusting the mercenary’s side of cyber-security. I am in constant communication with his computer right now. It is connected to a highly secured air-gapped system.

  I thought about it for a second. I had a few classes on coding and stuff from online courses. My mom had done some coding work from home and given me little tips. We’d talked for days for lack of anything to do without money. I received some computer advice here and there. That included some very subtle ‘wink wink don’t do it honey’ hacking tips. I started to laugh.

  “It’s an air gapped system that he un-air gapped by being a moron and now you’re wreaking havoc I bet!” I said with a smile. It probably had an intranet and connected to a whole lot of interesting things!

  Yes, yes I am. It won’t be air gapped for long either. He can no longer cut the connection, but him not trying to fight back would be more expedient for the next ten seconds.

  “Oh, I can do that. Tell me when everything’s ready.”

  ***

  As Gustav lay on the ground, he watched the samurai get up. Could he play dead? He should play dead. The boss had his vital signs but he couldn’t blame him for it could he? Anti-mother-fucking-tank rounds just threw him around! What the fuck would he do with his stupid fucking side-arm?

  “He’s… he’s going to replace his helmet… Shoot him then!” Stupidest order he’d ever fucking heard! Like that monster wouldn’t kill him in an instant!? That didn’t count the damn coil gun on his back and the sniper from fucking nowhere!

  “Don’t.” Mad Panda said while taking off his helmet. The thing moved weird, a bit jerkily. He understood why as it finally removed itself and the guy just plucked out… What was that? A dart? The… the dart from…

  “Yeah, that’s all you did buddy. If I didn’t have a bulletproof skull, it would have caused me a skull fracture. However, now it’s just annoying.” The samurai said as he tossed the dart away, like nothin’!

  The executive screamed in his ear to take the shot, but he didn’t. He wasn’t fucking suicidal! His chances of getting out of this were slim, for now, but he sure as fuck wouldn’t piss on ‘em. “Look, mister, I’m just a grunt, I’m not the one you want!” Gustav said as he got to a sitting position.

  The samurai fucking smiled at him! He loomed over him menacingly. It chilled him to the fucking bones.

  That grin didn’t reach his eyes. Nothing fun or joyful in that smile. No, it looked predatory. The smile of someone about to get revenge. “You’re right about that. You aren’t the one I want most. That would be…” The maniac went silent before his smile widened, showing teeth. The smile of a wolf.

  “Heeeelloooo Mister Calwell. Nice to meet you.” The exec went real quiet. Gustav didn’t know his boss’s name for deniability sake, but he could fucking guess…

  A new helmet appeared in the samurai’s hands and he put it on. He’d been keeping it off to keep the exec screaming at him to shoot. Fuck…

  It looked a lot like the old one but seemed just a bit bigger, heavier, and, especially, denser. Clearly some type of heavy armor instead of polymer and Kevlar helmets his boys and the like had. It sealed perfectly with the now thicker, yet still very flexible throat plates. When he spoke, the voice came from hidden speakers and sounded louder.

  “You know, even for someone your age, exposing an air gapped system like that is pretty dumb. Oh! It seems the jammers are accessible to my AI! Let’s fix our little net problem.” Suddenly, in the corner of his HUD, the little red X over the signal bars faded and he got a signal.

  “Oh ho ho! It seems that with this much access, I got a whole lot of evidence, including videos. While I’m at it, Altany, take every cred they have, scour offshore accounts, unload all their assets, everything. Let’s see how they react to being like the people they murdered. That evidence on the other hand…” He felt it as the man’s attention turned to him. Something poked the front of his armor slightly. A tail? The samurai hadn’t used it in the fight. It got through the material of his armor like nothin’…

  “That will help me identify all the innocent people you guys killed and burned. Calwell, I have complete control over your augs and bank accounts and oh so much more, I don’t need this little leak you created anymore. I’ll see you real soon.” Any humor or fake joy in the man’s voice had dropped away.

  “I-I can help you with…”

  “I don’t need you.” The samurai replied instantly. The fur-like thing on the tail started to… vibrate? Buzz? The tip got closer to his skin…

  “Please, please, I’m just a grunt! You-You want the exec, I just follow orders! I just did a job! You don’t need to kill me!” The samurai’s head tilted to the side, and when he spoke, his voice sounded cold as liquid nitrogen.

  “Oh, honey, you were dead the moment you aimed for the kid…”