*000000* Chapter 163 Hsbs

The last guy in their group was Evan Decker. He didn't exactly meet the Boss Lady's requirements, as he didn't have a Commercial License, but the guy made up for it with numerous certifications from forklifts to commercial and industrial exoskeletons. He used to work for All Foods as a warehouse Line Supervisor, overseeing twenty-something guys loading stuff in and out of big trucks, but some downsizing caught him up and he was let go. Still, he was doing okay, he had his eddies right, and started looking for work again, but when he took a bullet to the leg from a gang shootout almost a hundred meters down the road... it made him miss out on an important interview. Talk about shit luck!

Tanya, being the forward-thinking senorita she was, recognized his experience, and got him onboard with a cyberware leg at a reduced price from the Meadow Clinic and a promise that once White Silver Delivery Services expanded into an operation that had a warehouse it would have his name on it. Provided he performed to expectations and another, more highly qualified candidate didn't fall out of the sky into her lap. Evan was a good sport about it though, and Jackie thought that he saw a good opportunity when it was handed to him.

Businesses like this just didn't spring up from nothing overnight and work as well as they did— Tanya was really showcasing her chops with the organization of this operation, even if she was setting parameters and delegating while handling different fiddly bits behind the scenes.

As a great man once said, 'Delegation is a superpower all its own.'

Jackie didn't know who the hell said that shit, but it sure was profound.

"Heya, chooms? You ready to get this show on the road?" Jackie grinned broadly as he swaggered up.

Tito shrugged as he used the perma-marker to make the last few checks before he lifted his blue and silver ballcap off his head to swipe at his forehead with his thumb. "All ready to go, Jackie. Vans are fueled up, tires are good, windshield wipers are filled, and we even checked the blinker fluid."

"Blinker fluid, heh, you're a funny guy, Tito." Jackie snapped his fingers before clapping his hands together and pointing finger guns at Evan, "And what about you, eh? Did your plug come through?"

The red-headed man's pale cheeks were ruddy from the July heat, but there was a bit of a smile on his lips, and he tilted his head to the side. "Yeah, Sherry said we could buy in bulk. If we have the eddies then she's got the goods."

"Super Nova." Jackie laughed, "Just preem."

There was another reason Evan was given such a sweet offer too: He was currently the All Foods of Santa Maria street's general manager's main squeeze and Input. She loved the way he 'worked his hips,' hearing him tell it, but it wasn't enough to save his job at the warehouse there because it wasn't just his job that was downsized— all the Line Supervisors got the boot. Apparently, the company thought that having a floor-level manager supervising the workers directly was redundant given they had those middle-level managers up in the fancy offices overlooking the place.

But their loss was White Silver Delivery Services' gain.

One thing that the Nomads were looking to purchase large quantities of was shelf-stable food, and All Foods was the best place to get it. So by buying in bulk with the discounts afforded for such purchases, it meant that both WSDS and the Nomads got more for a better price. Everybody wins!

"Alright then boys, let's saddle up and ride! But first, to the pharmacy!"

"Five hundred 50 milligram tablets of Neo-Penicillien. Check. Fifty 1-CC syrettes of Morphine-B. Check. Five hundred 5 milligram tablets of Ivermectin. Check. Fifty bottles of Right Brand Men and Women's Multi-vitamin... ten, twenty, thirty, forty... aaannndd fifty. Check." Jackie went down the list with his marker in hand, the polysheet for his records clipped to the left side while the Right Brand Pharmacy's sales invoice was on the right of the clipboard.

Jackie was checking over the high-value pills and drugs while Julio was looking through a large poly box filled with other important medical stuff. Bandages, gauze, surgical tubing, saline solution sachets, poly bags and needles for the saline solution sachets, clamps, grippers, and whatever else a Nomad doc might need. The poor guy was looking a bit frazzled as he opened up a poly box and squinted at the label. "Aye, Jackie. What the fuck are Alligator Jaw Foreceps? These right?"

"Don't open the boxes up, holmes. That shit is supposed to be sterile." Jackie huffed, put his clipboard on the box of stuff he was working on, and walked over.

"Don't worry, this stuff looks like it's still sealed in a baggie." The man shook his head and handed the box over to Jackie, who closed it shut.

"And the customer, that Doc they got, is gonna be the one inspecting the purchase. Anything out of place he'll tell us, and we'll return it for a refund if it ain't right." Jackie chuffed and looked at the label, "And it says Alligator Jaw Foreceps on the box, don't it?"

Julio's mustache twitched as the guy gave Jackie an exasperated look. "Well excuuuuse me, Jackie. I'm a chemical guy, remember? You can't just trust what the shit is on the label in my line of work. You gotta check and test it first— if you're adding a 55-gallon drum of Methltetrapolyoxide to a mix instead of Metheldipolyoxide because the chemical company mislabeled something then you've got a huge deal on your hands."

"Hermano, I get it." Jackie patted Julio on the shoulder, "Double-checking everything comes with the territory. However, we're not mixing chems that are gonna blow up in our faces. We're delivering goods. It ain't rocket science. And since when did you mix chems anyway?"

Julio huffed and rolled his eyes, "I never did, but I was the guy who delivered the chemicals to the guys who did. Tests and checks at every station. Chain of custody type shit."

"Eh, well, we ain't gotta be like that. Precise and accurate, yeah, but not like that. If it's on the list then it goes in the box. Now, finish that up, yeah? We gotta go to All Foods."

"Fifty cases of Mmm-Mmm Potted Scop Meat; quantity 500 units. Check. Ten cases of Meat Delight meat tubes; quantity 1,000 units. Check. Ten cases of Vegi Delight vegetable tubes; quantity 1,000 units. Check. Fifty cases of SPAM, mmm, SPAM... should pick some up for Mama on the way home..." Jackie hummed to himself as he went down the list.

Out of the corner of his eye, he could see all of the stuff being loaded up into the two panel vans, and they were being stacked from the floor to the roof. It was a hell of a lot of food, but building up a stockpile of shelf-stable foods for hundreds of people was a lot more than this; they'd likely be making multiple trips back here for a while to satisfy the needs of the Aldecaldos. Tito, Julio, and Lenny were hard at work, sweating their asses off to put it all in the vans and getting it secured...

In the meanwhile, Evan was up in the general manager's office, heh, laying down some good dick on the lady to ensure she's happy enough to keep this little arrangement running. He'd call Evan a lucky bastard, but Sherry wasn't all that pretty. Pretty enough that Jackie would put Little Jackie to work on her if that was what it took to secure the product, but he wouldn't show up to a bar, see her across the room, and say 'That's the one I'm gonna take home with me.'

She was Plan C material at best, but... eh, Evan seemed happy enough to be bumping uglies instead of working, and it got them these discounted prices, so it was worth it.

"Twenty-five Thorton Colby C125 air filters. Check. Twenty-five Thorton Colby C125 cabin air filters. Check. Ten TMC-15 oil filters. Check..."

By the time they pulled up to the 2nd Amendment that the Boss Lady worked at to pick up some ammunition for the Aldecaldos the vans were packed to the gills and the suspension was sagging.

They were going to have to store the ammunition between their feet because there just wasn't any more room in the back at all...

The moment they crossed the river into Pacifica, their eyes were peeled and the safeties on their Lexingtons were off.

There was NCPD out here and all, but not nearly enough in Jackie's opinion, which was rather funny to think about now that he wasn't a 'Tino... though he hadn't formally renounced his membership yet. The Valentino leadership and Padre were waiting for Tanya to finish her treatments to settle their debts to her, and when that happened he was going to be there for her. She deserved to have a familiar face in her corner when that went down, and he knew his madre was going to be there too.

Still, the ride was rather pleasant all things considered...

"Take a left here at this alleyway," T-Bug's cool voice filtered into his mind as she guided them once more through the unfamiliar back roads toward the Aldecaldo camp. "After that it should be a straight shot for the next kilometer until you see their gates on the right."

"Heh, thanks for the directions, T-Bug. You gonna dip out?" She had last time, but it was for a decent enough reason in Jackie's opinion; Pacifica was Voodoo Boy territory, and she'd just escaped them not too long ago. He didn't blame her for being wary when wandering the Net in this part of the city.

"No. Not this time. I'll be on the line and scoping out the surroundings. Keeping an eye out for you guys. I was a bit... skittish last time, but I think I'm good. 'Each time we face our fear, we gain strength, courage, and confidence in the doing.' Teddy Roosevelt."

"Heh, good on you. I need to start making a list of all these dead guys you keep quoting... look them up. Sound pretty cool." Jackie chuckled as he shrugged his shoulders. "For dead guys, anyway."

"I think you should, if only because there is a lot you can learn from history and what it teaches." There was a pause before she continued. "If you keep your stock rising with Tanya then you just might find yourself in need of that knowledge and wisdom."

"Hora... I can see it now... Jackie Welles, CEO of 'Whatever Silver Company that Tanya Made This Week.' Eh? You think my GED will be good enough for that position?"

"I think... that in this day and age, what you can do probably matters more than whatever fancy degree you might have. But that isn't to say that you might not learn something for a higher level of education. Tanya has one of our chooms learning Netrunning and Programming from some educational shards, and while I'm good, I was self-taught. Looking over her shoulder, metaphorically speaking, has shown me that there are some gaps in my knowledge of the basics. So I got a copy of the shard and I'm doing the program myself."

"Ahhhh... forever a student learning, you are, right?"

"Dunno why you phrased it like that, but yes."

"Who knows? Not even I am... cognizant? Yeah, cognizant of what goes through my mind half the time." Jackie laughed and shook his head. "Anyway, we're about to pull up to the gates, so we'll chat more later, yeah?"

"—And last but not least..." Jackie hefted up a pair of medium-sized green-painted steel ammo can and set it on a steel table. "2,000 rounds of 9x10mm. Sealed in ten, 200-round poly bags. The separation and stuff for long-term storage is free of charge, of course."

Six other cans containing 7.5mm used in the Ajax, 5.7mm used in the Copperhead, and .45 caseless were on the table, with four crates of standard double-ought buckshot and two crates of slugs for most 12-gauge shotguns.

Saul Bright and Panam Palmer nodded as they looked over the case before cracking it open. "No .38 caseless? Those of us with Novas are running a mite low."

Jackie slipped the cap off his head and scratched at his hair. "If it wasn't on the list then it ain't here, hombre."

Panam, the damn pretty little senorita she was, cocked her hip out and threw her honcho a smirk. "You forgot to put it on the list, didn't you?"

Saul's shoulders tensed up as his lips thinned into a line, causing them to disappear behind his black curly beard and mustache, and a snort left his nostrils. "I think I did."

"I knew it. I told you, didn't I?" She certainly sounded smug, it made Jackie wonder if she sounded smug while getting those beautiful cheeks clapped from the back.

Woah, down Jackie. On the clock, esse.

"You did. It just... slipped my mind, but everything else we wanted for this run made it here, so that's good." The older man scratched at his beard before looking at Jackie, "So what's the damage?"

Well, the essentials like the medical supplies and medicine were sold at Cost+50%, food was at Cost+250%, parts were at Cost+200%... Tanya was pretty specific with the prices of every item that the Aldecaldos were wanting...

"Total price is €$19,078... but since Tanya and T-Bug love ya and everyone likes even numbers, we're rounding it down to €$19,000." Jackie handed over three copies of the polysheet invoice for their records. "T-Bug will email the digital copy of the invoice too."

"Shit. This is the second time you've run supplies for us and it still blows my mind. Half the price those scop-suckers were charging us." Miss Palmer turned those pretty eyes to Jackie and she smiled, "We just might be able to turn a profit for the Clan at this rate."

Jackie gave her a pretty grin right back. "Well, the Boss Lady wants to help, and make some eddies while she's at it. Though it might be premature, once we get some more vehicles and drivers we might be able to start selling to the other Nomad families around here as well. So if it ain't too much trouble if you'd put out some feelers for us and gauge interest..."

"I think I can help." Panam chirped, the teen toying with her bun, all but ignoring the firm look from her leader; seemed like this filly was the type to do first and ask for permission later.

Jackie didn't dislike those types of girls, particularly because he wasn't in charge of them.

"We'll ask around and see what they think. It's the least we can do," Saul hedged as he closed the ammo can and slid it to the side of the table, "However, if we're going to do this then Miss Tanya is going to need to be able to deliver; empty promises don't mean much to us Nomads. Words are wind, and all that."

Jackie rested his hands on his hips and nodded. "Hey, I hear you. Trust me. The two vans we have right now seem to be handling your needs just fine, and if we get the interest then I don't think the Boss Lady would say no to buying up more vans or even trucks while hiring some extra drivers to deliver. But the interest has got to be there first. She moves quick, but only on a sure thing, you know?"

"Well, the eddies we just gave you get you halfway to a new van already if you ain't a total gonk at negotiation." The young woman huffed a laugh as she leaned on the table, pushing her tetas together with her arms. Oh yeah, she was interested.

To his surprise, T-Bug cut in.

"Oh, Tanya definitely has the funds to buy more vans."

Jackie nodded, "T-Bug says if you can drum up the interest then we can expand. She's got the funds to buy more vics, and I certainly know more than a few guys looking for good work. If the other families are looking for better prices on stuff and be organized with what they want when they want it..."

He was probably stepping out a little bit further than his remit here but... Jackie was a go-getter and this seemed like something Tanya would approve anyway.

Best to strike while the iron was hot.

The thought of just messaging Tanya never crossed his mind.

[Julius Bessemer]

[Night City Net]

[Virtual Combat Simulator WORLD]

[July 6th, 2067]

In an effort to have a little bit of fun with Tanya Degurechaff and engage with her on a more personal level, Julius Bessemer floated the idea of spending some of her time asleep engaging in a time-honored American tradition: Video Games.

There were a large variety of them out on the market, but one that Julius was most intrigued by was Virtual Combat Simulator WORLD, or "VCS" as the players liked to call it. It was, according to the online reviews, one of the most in-depth warfare simulators out on the market that wasn't owned by a corporation or nation-state; if you wanted to get something better, then one would have to enlist in a corporate security force or national military. It ran the gamut of Land, Sea, and Air combat— with a special module for orbital combat if a customer was so inclined to fight LEO or within a space station of some stripe— with large-scale force-on-force battles available.

What intrigued Julius the most was its robust and highly detailed aviation combat, which had hundreds of helicopters, fixed-wing, and AVs for players to choose from.

After doing some research, he was a touch surprised to see that the cockpits of many aircraft he had flown himself were rendered faithfully and in high detail, and the flight manuals likewise were correct with some even directly supplied by the manufacturers! Of course, given the way these things played out, nothing among the current generation of aircraft was correct; manufacturers and nation-states naturally wanted to maintain their secrecy and thus left many details out. This led the developers to take some artistic license with things and make educated guesses about their flight characteristics and performance. However, for most vehicles manufactured from 2045 and before they were completely correct in terms of their capabilities because they had long since been removed from the inventories of larger corporations and national militaries.

No doubt they made more money from game licenses such as VCS than they did from actual purchases these days.

So Julius thought that once Tanya had completed her Ground School Education shard she might appreciate being able to fly some of the aircraft within the game; the week he played it to test the waters he found that it was rather faithfully executed and it would serve as a decent training aid for when she had the time to take a piloting course and earn her wings in the real world.

The game was somewhat limited by the fact that cities across the world had their Nets segregated to prevent another DataKrash from occurring, but VCS had a large enough following worldwide to justify a daily satellite uplink... of which player's monthly subscription paid for the majority of it. It had a wide variety of different game modes, but among the most popular were the '3-Hour Battle' and the '7-Day War' game modes. However, by far the most played mode was the 'World at War' game mode, which used all of the available game modes and the daily satellite uplinks to create a living, breathing persistent world. With over three hundred battle maps of varying sizes, hundreds of thousands of players from all over the world would battle against each other in a full-scale war that spanned the globe.

It was a good bit of fun, and a unique feature of VCS compared to its closest competitor, 'Full Spectrum Warfare ONLINE,' was that while its system was class-based instead of freeform, the player's characters were persistent and it had some small RPG mechanics that rewarded players for their time invested. A player would receive a standard baseline character, and depending on how they played the game, their performance in certain areas would improve over others. An Infantry player who favored armor and heavy weapons would over time gain more physical strength and stamina over an Infantry player whose character spent most of their time in a gun turret.

Of course, with cyberware it changes up the calculation quite a bit, but the game had a pretty decent system in place to prevent players from installing as much cyberware as possible. There were limits, based on Neural Load Points, with cyberware taking up NLP depending on how taxing it was on the player character, and while Julius wasn't a surgeon specialized in cyberware he felt that the 'maximum' NLP a player had access to was likely lower than the real world maximum. Granted, this was a game, and if the amount of cyberware on the players was too high then things like having the appropriate equipment for the mission, player skill, movement, and positioning would be pushed to the wayside.

Still, despite this, Julius actually found himself having a good bit of fun, and now he had the chance to share it with Tanya— the Good Lord knows that this girl needed a bit of fun in her life.

Her work ethic, while highly admirable, was still far too much for a woman as young as herself, yet... he couldn't bear to bring himself to try and hold her back. She had She had her own raison d'être, and whatever was driving her was making her highly successful, so as the American saying went: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

"Julius."

He smiled and looked over at the young woman's avatar, which was rendered beautifully using her body map, and she had a very cute scowl on her face. "Yes, Tanya?"

"We have no equipment. Or weapons. Or armor."

The man nodded, "Indeed, you are correct. We took the 'Mercenary' class, as you already know, which means that we can work for any nation or corporation within the game. We can take battles as we see fit and purchase equipment, including aircraft, and operate them all without making a player character of a vehicle-based class."

"It also means that we're the 'poorest' class in the game with the slowest start." He added as he looked down at his body and examined the olive drab jumpsuit he was wearing; he'd reset his account back to zero so that he could go into it with Tanya 'fresh,' as it were. "If we joined a military we would get kit supplied to us, but our ability to augment and adjust our kit would be limited to what that nation had in inventory... and we would be restricted to weapons, armor, vehicles, and cybernetics that said nation or corporation had. Rather limiting, in my opinion, but as the 'Mercenary' class we have none of those. We just have to earn them ourselves… or strip them from the dead."

Blue and gold eyes narrowed as she placed her hands on her hips. "And how are we to do that without even any starting equipment?"

"By taking odd jobs, of course! To the base commander's office!"

After following the navigational waypoints throughout the small but faithfully rendered Fuel & Ammunition Rearming Point (FARP), the pair found a tent where they encountered an NPC that was acting as the Camp's commander. When prompted for mercenary jobs, the AI-controlled Captain supplied them with a list of jobs that they could complete, along with the estimated time they would take and their payout.

[FARP Charlie (NUSA) - Beginner Mercenary Contracts]

Spoiler: Contracts

"Why are some of these jobs highlighted while others are grayed out?" Tanya pinched her lower lip as she stood across from the camp commander.

"We don't have the necessary 'levels' to perform some of those actions. If you focus on the ones that are grayed out you'll see what level is required to perform them and what skill is necessary for it. For example, we can currently do two odd jobs on this list: Sentry duty in a tower and reloading small arms magazines. If you look at the first job, 'Reload Aircraft Ammunition Canisters,' you'll see that a 'Logistics' level of 10 is required. Same for the convoy truck driver jobs, which requires a 'Driving - Wheeled' of 5."

"And I surmise that if we 'reload small arms magazines' until we reach the Logistics level of 10, then we can do the 'reload aircraft ammunition canisters' job?"

"Correct."

"And given how these jobs are arrayed... it is likely that this location doesn't have all of the 'entry level' jobs that we could use to raise our skills in other areas. Like the radar and radio operator positions... which means that we must travel to other locations to find those jobs?"

"Also correct."

"Very well then, it appears our course is set. We'll take the reloading magazines job and start there."

[Mercenary Job Accepted: Reload Small Arms Magazines: 10 minutes, €$200.]

[Please follow the Nav Markers to the Job Location.]

[Good luck and Godspeed, Mercenary.]

While they walked Julius explained the underlying mechanics for how the game worked. It was rather fun, giving the players a lot of freedom to play how they wished, but given the massive number of battles being waged, there was balancing going on that roughly split the number of human and AI players equally throughout the matches. You could just as easily play an infantryman on the frontlines as you could crew a naval vessel or be an aircraft pilot. Of course, there was a system in place that prevented everyone from just selecting the 'coolest' jobs, as it was natural for everyone to want to be the gunner in a tank or the pilot of a multi-million eurodollar Interceptor or bomber... but if you performed well in the least taken roles on the battlefield then it granted you points to put toward your preferred starting position in the next battle.

"To further balance this out, there are a number of critical stations that exist on a battlefield, such as the radio and radar station positions, and the logistical convoy drivers." Julius hummed as they walked through the tents and toward the largest tent near the dirt landing strip— fuel blivets and the like visible on the opposite side of the field. "To get players invested in playing all sorts of roles and not just doing one thing only, there are bonuses applied to those positions when players are the ones manning them. Radar stations see further and have more fidelity, Radio stations have large broadcast radii and resist jamming better, and of course, the players driving the convoy vehicles can drive faster than the AI-controlled trucks to the edge of the battle space."

Players who routinely played these support roles got their level-ups in those various fields and got bonuses accordingly, thus rewarding them for their efforts... though if one listened to the boards it ended up shoe-horning players in the higher levels of play, and often caused conflicts. A player with a level 70 in Radar might be forced to take a spot on a Radar station, or a player with a level 45 in Radar might be kicked off the station in favor of the player with the level 70 because his bonuses made that station more effective. However, that was mainly only a problem in the... how did they call it again?

Ah, yes, the 'Sweaty Try-Hard' lobbies.

The pair arrived at a tent at the edge of the 'Ordnance' portion of the FARP, and after slipping inside they were greeted to the sight of a number of flimsy polymer tables. Large poly crates of loose ammunition were stacked up next to similar tubs of empty magazines from a variety of weapons— the most prevalent being the banana-shaped magazines of the Militech Ajax given this was a Militech/NUSA base.

Tanya looked at Julius. "Alright, we are here... now what?"

He snorted a touch, "And now we get to loading."

The man stepped forward and went to a table, 'accessing' the reloading menu, and that 'locked' him to the table. He hefted a case of 7.5mm caseless ammunition and set it on the table before sliding a case of empty Ajax magazines next to it, and he picked up a handful of rounds before loading them one at a time into the magazine. Off in the corner of his eye, he could see the 10-minute timer start to count down.

Once Tanya picked a table and started her own work, Julius spoke, "Once we finish this mission, we can accept it again without having to leave the area. With our first paycheck, I recommend we spend the €$200 bounty on purchasing a speed-loader for the Ajax magazines and then doing the mission again. It will, heh, speed things along for us. If you catch my drift."

'Click, clack, clop, click, click, clack, clop, click...'

"So are we really just reloading for ten minutes for the bounty? What good would purchasing the speedloader do for us?"

'Click, clack, clop, click, click, clack, clop, click...'

"If you open up your menu and look at the 'Missions' tab, you'll see that there is a set minimum number of magazines we have to load in these 10 minutes for the job to be considered complete. In this case, we have to load eight magazines. However, there is an additional bonus of €$2 eurodollars per magazine we load above that threshold. Ergo, the more magazines we load the more money we make, and the more magazines we load the faster our 'Logistics' EXP will rise. So the speedloader will greatly improve our experience gain and cash flow." He turned his head to look at Tanya while tossing the full magazine into the outgoing box and grabbed an empty one— a touch of a smirk on his lips, "You do want to actually play the game before the night is through, don't you?"

Tanya sighed as she grabbed a handful of ammunition, "Of all the things I expected to do in this game... part of my day job at the 2A wasn't one of them."

'Click, clack, clop, click, click, clack, clop, click...'