Chapter 47: Sneaky sneaky plants!

  “

  PridePrey: New Samurai! He’s called Mad Panda, cute, for sure gay, any idea for a ship?

  Mansplaying: We’re sure he’s gay? Awesome! Heard he got a sam partner, ez pz!

  Mansplaying: Looked it up, cowboy fetish anyone? Loving the punk and lawman dynamics! That’s just perfect!

  Mohawcutie: Nah, sorry, I can confirm he’s got someone. Probably married too! I even got footage:

  Mohawcutie:*SlapnCheeksofSolidSteel!!!.gif / IRL_PrinceCarryW/KnightNShinAr!.gif*

  Mansplaying: GOD DAMNIT!

  ”

  –Thread on the Shipofteaseus forum, 2057.

  ***

  You have an incoming call from Laser Jack.

  Well, that didn’t take as long as I’d like. “Tell him to… wait a minute please…” I said between labored breaths. Last batch for now…

  Since we had massive work to do everywhere and a limited number of drones, materials had to get places somehow. That somehow was a bunch of well paid workers! Oh, and me with a ridiculous looking hauling backpack. We had teams working all over every fucking floor of the first section since HVAC got fixed.

  I’d been adamant about waiting for the air to no longer be poisonous. Due to the size of a megabuilding, it took a while for the air to no longer be ninety percent smoke stack after the entire system died a tragic and very long overdue death.

  Altany and the Motherload drones organized this carpet of workers with AI precision that made no sense to me whatsoever. Didn’t need to. I just knew that if I did the rounds with ridiculously heavy loads, things would get done faster! My strength was still low in comparison to what it could be though… I beat human historical records, sure, but I could do better! No points for it though…

  I engaged every single boosted muscle I had along with my armor’s supports. The backpack Altany got me looked ridiculous since it could take loads larger than me! “Time to pull a Santa!”

  I shot forward and started unloading concrete mix, steel beams from my shoulder, massive equipment from my other, power tools that had been stuck to my hip and on and on! Overall, going to every work site only took a few minutes with me going at full speed for once. Some of the extra time came from having to jump and climb up a floor or two since, well, I kind of blew up a few stairways.

  We had a lot of work to do.

  I collapsed on a patch of concrete rubble, breathing heavily. “Didn’t we talk about cardio augs?”

  Yes. You forgot until it was no longer in your budget.

  I winced. “Oh, right…”

  Laser Jack is still on hold.

  “Oh! Fuck, okay, put him through.”

  My least favorite samurai (not that it was a long list, really) decided to avoid the pleasantries . Nice of him. “Hey, Mad Panda, are you free? I need to talk in private.”

  I looked around, but it’s not like my damn helmet would let out any sound! “Hum… Yeah, sure, my helmet’s pretty much nuke proof so I don’t think…”

  While it would survive a nuclear strike from outside the original fireball blast, you would not, to be clear.

  I rolled my eyes, but before I could respond, Laser Jack threw me for a loop. “No, I need to visit and to have our conversation be fully private.”

  I mulled that one over. Yeah, I’d banned everyone in the Family but… Well, second chances! “Sure, which skybridge are you coming from?”

  ***

  It didn’t take long before I saw Laser Jack from a distance. Weirdly enough, the samurai had five guards with him. They sported mechanically assisted armor from what my augs told me. Their guns might have enough oomf to get through even my suit!

  The New-Montreal air smelled just as toxic as always, which I could tell since the floor eighteen sky-bridge still wasn’t sealed back up. What can I say, it didn’t rank high on our priority list! Good excuse to keep my helmet on. The HVAC system created positive pressure, making sure no factory air made it in.

  Even with this being the middle of the day, holographic ads and neon provided most of the illumination as the small group came forward. Confident we could have a shouty conversation over the omnipresent sound of rain, I piped up. “Laser Jack has permission to enter, you fuckers don’t. Fuck off.”

  They didn’t like that. “Sir, we have been instructed to follow and protect our charge. We intend to do so.” I could feel the glare through the mask on the man’s heavy armor.

  If it helps, I believe the implication is that he will do so no matter your wishes and that you cannot stop him.

  Oh, this’d be a dick swinging contest! Awesome! “Thanks Altany, really helps when you explain the implied stuff.” I said with my mic off.

  You’re welcome.

  Well, show of force time! In the span of less than two seconds, my railgun and Tunneler assembled, my tail deployed in ‘chainsaw’ mode, and a few blades came forward just for shits and giggles. Everything powered up, more for the visual effect than anything. “I would love to see you try, big guy. Wouldn’t take a step forward if I were you.”

  My animated eyes probably reflected my smile. I could see a bit of a smirk on Laser Jack’s face, which confused the fuck out of me. Still, he tried to defuse the situation. “Sergeant, please retreat to the other side of this bridge, like I recommended before.”

  We were having a standoff in spitting range of Peach-Trees’s entrance, which meant I wouldn’t let the fucker a centimeter closer. I’d have already shot him –non-lethaly– if it wasn’t for Laser Jack.

  The idiot snorted in that macho, blustery way jocks did. He then made a critical mistake: asshole took a step forward.

  Before his foot could even land, I’d already engaged my neural-coprocessor and raised my gun. A smarter fucker on Jack’s other side raised his weapon and I pointed my railgun at him. The foot that had been aiming to land closer to my building ended up much further back when I shot the asshole’s leg off!

  Since I didn’t know what that armor was made of, I might have gone a tinsy bit overboard when it came to velocity and caliber. Such a crying god damn shame… My railgun, already powered up to the tits, took off Smarter’s arm at the elbow.

  Thankfully, the smarter’s arm was a prosthetic, going by the white-ish fluid flowing out instead of blood. Asshole’s armor probably tightened into a tourniquet, he’d be fine, no need to scream so much! “Don’t.” I warned while aiming at the three others who seemed to realize this shit was for real!

  The entire exchange took less than a second. “Always nice to visit Mad! See you guys later!” Just like that, the samurai of the bunch walked into my building.

  I’d already called Lila and Francis and they took over the job of keeping corpos away, already aiming at the ground between them, as we stepped inside. Thankfully, the idiots did retreat to the other building. Probably a better place to conduct medical exams or something.

  “Sorry about that, I haven’t been able to get rid of them and I needed a truly private talk.” That surprised me. A samurai couldn’t get rid of body guards? He seemed to intuit my question. “Corpo political bullshit. After both you and Jackal tried to kill me I had to negotiate with execs and the like. These guys are mostly there to spy on me.”

  I nodded in response but kept my mouth shut. Weird, Laser Jack talked a lot more directly today. No pleasantries or implied meanings that I couldn’t get, to my knowledge.

  I believe he has adapted to your peculiarities, including modifying his social warfare software. That may be why you find his attitude and conduct less grating.

  “Ah… Is that a problem?” I asked with my mic off. We were heading to a pre-arranged meeting spot that I could make quite isolated very easily.

  Not necessarily. It is similar to how you adapt your conduct to the people you address to create better interactions. However, it does mean that he may be able to manipulate you more easily now that he has a more complete understanding of your mentality.

  “Huh… Thanks Altany.” I didn’t know how to handle that. Welp, moving on!

  We entered a destroyed nightclub, heading to a booth with food already there waiting for us. It used to be a nice place with post-modern architecture and purple everywhere. The place didn’t look nearly as nice these days with the destroyed walls, holes in the floor and half the kitchen exposed! Thankfully, the private booths were intact, weird tear shaped metal things that blocked sound.

  After we sat, I started eating some somewhat decent synthetic udon while he got comfortable. The fish-like artificial aroma mixed with salt and MSG made for a decent broth. Hey, the new muscles needed a ton of food, I was hungry! The price for never running out of power. “So, what’s up.” I asked after slurping a big bunch of noodles and activating a privacy field.

  “So, you know how that hive under your building was undiscovered by samurais?” I nodded, mouth full of fake-tasting vegetable toppings. “Well, there are a lot more of those than people know about. The more we look, the more we find, and they’re dangerous.”

  Straight-forward, nice. “Alright… why come to me to talk about it?”

  “Well, the thing is, you’re not part of the Family and extremely unlikely to have spies in your enforcers. The Family does its best, but hum… As you know, it’s not enough to avoid leaks, people trying to take advantage and… assholes.” My chopsticks snapped at ‘assholes’. Had to get better at controlling my strength.

  “Yeah, I know… So, want me to help with those? Don’t you have more powerful independent samurais? Or samurais in your corporation that wouldn’t talk? Also, hand over those chopsticks please.” He did, a sympathetic smile on his face.

  “We do, but you underestimate how many we have to deal with. There are a lot of them, and too few of us. Plus, in high-population areas, samurais get recognized. Online message boards are great at creating insane conspiracy theories, but broken clocks are right twice a day, you know?”

  I gave him a blank look. “Wait, wouldn’t that only be once? I mean, even if you have one of those that only does one-to-twelve, they still have that ‘PM’ or ‘AM’ at the bottom, right?”

  “Old mechanical clocks didn’t have that.” He said with a little hand wave, but now I was curious!

  “Why?”

  “What?”

  “Why not? I mean, I’ve seen one of those in vids, but why not have a little indicator at the bottom? Actually, why not make a clock that would do a revolution once a day?” Altany decided to answer.

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  Because it would make telling minutes apart twice as difficult.

  “Huh, thanks. I still find it suspect they wouldn’t put a little ‘AM’ thing or something.”

  Back in those days, most people could look at the sun.

  “Ah! Thanks Altany.” I turned back to a very unimpressed Laser Jack. “What? It’s interesting.”

  “Anyway, you’re not nearly as recognizable, you have support personnel that can keep your activities private, safer and those have the equipment to prevent a future resurgence with that scanning tech I gave you. Most of all, you really need points, right? You can bring Johnny or Jackal if you feel like it. One of the problems with those hidden hives is that most samurais take care of those via mass destruction, whereas you’re a close-quarters combat specialist. You can dive in and take care of it yourself, without the area becoming a disaster site or people even knowing a hive was there. Jackal is similarly focused and Johnny’s a precision striker. You won’t have to annihilate a city to get the job done, basically.”

  I thought about it as I switched to some sort of veggies-sandwich full of some vat-grown whatever the hell. Tasted like… I had no fucking clue, the ethereal concept of veggies? Meh, salt, fat and MSG could make anything taste good.

  One thing Laser Jack didn’t say but I still understood –ten points for Huffle Puff!-- was that this could be seen as part of an apology. I needed points, badly. Those hives could go to others, but he felt bad and wanted to help out.

  “Alright. I’m guessing you want me to involve as few as possible? You should know, I don’t lie. Doesn’t mean I’ll reveal anything, but I’ll refuse to answer or say ‘fuck off’ rather than make up some bullshit. Sorry, but that’s who I am.” Thankfully, the Family guy smiled at that.

  “Not a problem. I don’t tend to lie either, just interpret things in my favor. So, if I send you a few suspected locations, you’ll check them out?” At my nod he kept going. “Perfect. Thank you, it’ll be a big help and make the city safer. I’m going to give you suspected locations, so we’re not necessarily sure anything’s there. Still, there’s a good chance. They’ll all be around NM as I thought that would be your priority. Do you mind if I make a few calls while I’m away from the guards?”

  “No problem, help yourself to some food too, there’s more than enough.” After checking for poison with a little samurai thingy, he did participate.

  A few minutes later, I felt a need to say something. “Hey, hum…” Laser Jack turned to me, curious. I looked him straight in the eyes and projected as much honesty as possible. “Thank you, Laser Jack. It… it’ll help my people a lot.”

  He gave me a sad smile. “It’s the least I can do.”

  I nodded, but kept going. “Doesn’t mean you had to.”

  Then, we got back to a companionable silence (he subvocalized and I stuffed my face). I mentally prepared myself, analyzing what I needed, who I could take, everything. I needed to get this right, be careful, think ahead and take my time. Aliens would roam the streets of my city if I didn’t.

  ***

  Wind blew through the open door of the troop transport going at full speed. “Fuck, can’t we go faster!?” I asked, agitated.

  One of the suspected locations turned out to be somewhere I’d really rather not see destroyed.

  There is no need to panic. This location has probably been dormant for quite a long time. It is unlikely to awaken in the time it takes for us to get there.

  “Still!” I selected more enforcers than I’d reasonably have to and called Jackal for backup. Johnny had to stay in the building in case of a Kai attack. The slaves might be in less danger in a few weeks, but for now? Yeah, making sure a samurai stayed in the building at all times was probably the smart move.

  The understructure of New Montreal flew by, oddly devoid of ads. It looked sort of drab without all the neon and gifs. Was that the long term side-effects of capitalism? Maybe? Whatever, I liked colors and stimulation but they could sap my energy in excess.

  Not important. As we arrived, I jumped out and Robin followed me. We rushed over and immediately asked the guards the most important thing in this situation. “Did you get attacked by aliens?”

  The Badger guard blinked a few times, his gun pointed and a panicked look in his eyes. “Quoi?”

  “Les osti d’aliens? Vous vous êtes tu fait attaquer caliss!? / The fucking aliens! Did you get attacked for fuck’s sake!?” A few more blinks.

  “Hum… non? Pourquoi? / Hum… no? Why?”

  I sighed in deep relief. Robin took over after that. It didn’t take long for me to meet back up with one of the Badgers I knew. “Hey, Dubois, ?a fait un bout! Content d’savoir que tu t’es pas fait manger! / Hey, Dubois, it’s been a while! Happy to know you didn’t get eaten!”

  “Ouains, tu peux tu expliquer celle là? Robin a dit qu’on a p't'être une infestation? / Yeah, can you explain that one? Robin said we might have an infestation?” It took a little bit to explain, and I might not have said everything. The basics were simple though: Hive nearby, please let me kill the fuckers.

  Right before I went down, Jackal arrived. Right on time! “Hey, Jackal! Nice to meet in person, sorry for disturbing you but I have a suspected hive deep underground. Kind of worried what happens if they have an upstairs exit somewhere.”

  “Yeah, no fucking problem. Any idea how deep these fuckers are?” No bullshit, nice. Had to say, she cut an imposing figure! Her costume focused a lot on leather. Long leather coat, slim form fitting armor, leather pants and absolutely covered in knives, guns and who the fuck knew! The helmet had pretty long narrow ears compared to my wider ones.

  I could tell, she’d been smart enough to not let her AI con her into prosthetics. The helm stretched longer than mine and had more teeth, like a snarling jackal! Cool! The power armour looked subtle, maybe more of an aug-jock like me? Most of my power came from my muscles, which allowed for a much less bulky and more flexible suite.

  Two handles came out of her back, probably melee weapons. Might be better at close range than me.

  “A bit, but no exact location. This is an abandoned metro station, a deep one. Might survive a nuclear blast down there. I need to check shit over and figure out where the readings are coming from. I’d invite you down, but the gang in charge aren’t big on strangers in their home.”

  Weirdly, Jackal had no problem with that. “Al-fucking-right, why’d you invite me?”

  “Well, for one, I don’t know if I’ll be enough, even with this many enforcers around. No idea how bad this one might be. Also, I’d like to have somebody outside, just in case they come up when I poke the anthill. Hope that’s alright? Sorry if this isn’t really worth your…” The woman shook her head immediately.

  “Nah, whole fuckload of people to protect and you had the good sense to call for backup. I imagine Johnny’s protecting the building in your absence, so you needed a samurai you can at least tolerate. With the Family out, that leaves me. I’m… real fucking happy to hear you don’t hate me after… Well, you know…” Jackals helmet turned away from me a bit, but I shrugged.

  “Lila likes you, and she’s got a good sense for people. Also, you tried to kill Laser Jack after what happened, tells me all I need to know!” I said with my animated eyes conveying my smile.

  She chuckled. “Thanks. I’ll stay up here on my own if you…”

  Lila interrupted, to both our surprises. “I’ll stay with her. You’re the melee type, right? Might as well have some ranged assistance.” No one objected, so I headed down.

  With how insanely deep the would-be station was, we had to go down four flights of steep stairs. More than one checkpoint let us pass after a few words from our escort. There were advantages to being a known ally.

  Unlike other gang territories, no one contested it, so only Badger graffiti covered the bare cement walls. When we arrived at the tunnel, prettier ones that could almost be called freskas took their place. Some resembled children’s drawings. I liked the look. We had some similar art close to the school. Well, before the cluster-bombs kind of… Hey, plenty of space for new drawings for them after we rebuilt!

  Then, we went down the actual tunnel, and things got more interesting. Apartments were built stacked on top of each other, often fashioned out of shipping containers. Others were just constructions of 3D printed polymers, aluminum and steel scrap. Most were flush with the tunnel’s walls or even used them for support.

  I’d bought an upgrade to my helmet’s sensors. It looked for any odd fluctuations in infra-red radiation. Pretty far down the tunnel, maybe halfway to the abandoned worksite, we found one. “Got something. Altany, could you please analyze that?”

  It appears there is an abnormal amount of heat behind this apartment.

  We entered and I apologized to the woman who lived there. “I’m sorry, but did you leave a fire there? Cook something in that spot?” After getting a negative, I started to get worried. “Hey, Dubois, tu veux ptêtre évacuer ste section citte… / Hey, Dubois, you might wanna evac this section…”

  He looked at me, obviously alarmed. “T’es s?r? / You sure?”

  “Non, mais j’vais l’être dans pas long. / No, but I should be pretty soon.” Dubois started to tell people to back off while I thought for a minute, then realized I had someone to do that for me. Someone much better at it in fact! “Altany, how do I find out?”

  I thought you’d never ask! I have a tier 0 deep survey spike for one point, but you’ll have to plant it first.

  I accepted and received a long, somewhat thick at the end spike. Nothing surprising really. I shrugged and, with a strong icepick grip, embedded it deeply at the warm spot.

  You did not need to plant it quite this hard, but it will do.

  “Hey, t’es rendu fort maintenant! / Hey, you’re strong now!” Dubois said, which given his strength and augs, that said something.

  I snorted. “J’tes déjà fort, j’suis juste plus fort. / I was already strong, I’m just stronger.”

  “Bin s?r mon grand. / Sure, big guy.”

  Before I could answer that loveable asshole, Altany gave me some info.

  I believe you’ve just stabbed into a hive’s root system. The hive is now active.

  ***

  “So, hum… Thanks for vouching for me. Means a lot.” Jackal said, a bit awkward. This wasn’t like her! She usually went through life with her head held high, spitting fire and chewing nails! ‘Fuck was wrong with her!?

  That god damn Laser Jack and his political bullshit! She should have castrated him even after that apology, that absolute fucker!

  Also well… she didn’t spend much time around people she liked, or trusted, but there weren’t many of those. Samurais were all fucking weirdoes and she didn’t trust those Family corpos even before the incident. Her own family left her in a fucking ditch! It’s not like she hated people, just… cunts. Wasn’t her fault most people she met were cunts! But now…

  “Meh, I just told him the truth. You clearly didn’t know and looked pissed as fucking hell. Plus, I don’t know, got a good feeling about you.”

  Jackal didn’t blush, not at all. “Thanks… So, hum… you and Mad, what’s the sitch? You guys together? Seemed close.” Surprisingly, the woman laughed.

  “Oh god, no. Robin’s his husband, they have three kids. He’s more like… well, I hesitate to call him my brother since we fuck around every so often which would make things very fucking weird, but something like that. We were in the same revolt, fought side by side, I carried their third, I’m aunt Lila to the kids, I come from the same place Robin did so I’m close to both of ‘em, you get the picture.” The girl evaded a bit when it came to where she came from, interesting.

  “I… kinda do? Not one for… people, in general.” What the fuck had her pause so much!?

  “Yeah, I get that vibe. Got a few enforcers like that. Used to be in that headspace too before, well, you know. Panda’s good at building that community feeling and shit. Even now, I tend to stay more around the family than anything else. It’s just hard to trust people, you know? I’m not great at that…”

  Jackal nodded easily. Trusting was… well, she’d figure it out when she met people that didn’t fuck her over! The Family guided her at first because, well, what the fuck else was she supposed to do!? Never trusted anyone that much, really, but never fucking corpos!

  Following the Family’s suggestions just because they had samurais? Her fucking mistake and she’d have to live with it. On the other hand, those fuckers gave direction and now, well… Let’s say getting called helped more than she’d admit to.

  “Yeah. How’d you do it?”

  “Do what?”

  “Trust that Panda guy?”

  Surprisingly, it took the enforcer a few minutes to answer. “He… I’m not sure. The guy’s so open and honest, it’s hard not to. Dude tries hard to be trustworthy, I guess? I’m more surprised he trusts me. I was just some random prostitute...” Lila suddenly fell silent and tensed up. Did she expect judgement? Ha!

  “Chill, knew some people that had to do that type of work. Desperation’s really good at lowering inhibitions, don’t I fucking know it. More of a thief myself. I mean, rather take from corpos whenever I could.” Her new acquaintance snorted.

  “Don’t you know? Stealing from thieves isn’t stealing.” They shared a quick laugh and the conversation moved on for a bit, sharing some criminal small-talk about hating corporations and corpo-sec. Jackal... didn't mind her company. She was fun.

  That came to a crashing halt when the alert came.

  “Hive’s active! Get ready!”

  Not long after, two holes of dirt crumpled in and the wide maws of two model eights appeared!

  Jackal wasted no time going for one and planting her electric bat in its face. With the ridiculous voltage going through that thing, it instantly froze up, giving her time to pull out her scrambler gun and fire! The worm couldn’t have been longer than two segments, it’d be enough.

  The baseball sized-projectile it shot unfolded into a mind bending design with a central spinning wide mono-wire and six thin eight-inch long blades, straight down the gullet! A few more boomerang throwing knives followed, just to be sure, so sharp that nothing stopped them as they spun through flesh like butter before doing just as much damage on the way back.

  That model would be followed by small units, no doubt about it, but it’d serve as a plug for a minute while she killed the other one. This one probably held some small models as an initial force that were waiting for the dirt to pass before attacking, but her efforts probably took care of them. Lots of loud shots boomed behind her but…

  “Huh… You fucking good?” Jackal asked, surprised at the impressively destructive woman. That… fucking hell she held that gun like an AR but it clearly did plenty enough damage to be an anti-materiel heavy machine-gun! Had to be esoteric ammo in that fucking beast…

  The enforcer just waved at her while watching the minced meat that used to be a model eight for any sign of movement. “I’m fine, I’ll handle this exit, don’t worry about it.”

  Something had to be wrong with her suit’s environmental systems, it felt a bit too warm…