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***
- Fuck, and they have good ice...
Judy's voice was a little strained, but I've had three rangers on my team for a week now, and the three of them can break any ice the gang has made. I have confidence in these girls. And even Kiwi, who I asked Panam and Judy to watch, has shown herself to be someone I can really trust. And that's gratifying.
- How much time do you need?
- Twenty minutes to do it quietly.
- Work, I'm not rushing you yet... and as always, do your best, or you won't have much time to confront the Ranners later. You'll have to collect data and get money out of the bandits.
- Yeah.
Kiwi's voice sounded slightly muffled. She'd been a little dazed for days now. But all this time, she had remained silent.
- Mentor, why don't you tell me what's wrong?
- No, nothing important.
- Mentor, there's still time... so why not talk?
- Another topic?
- Suggest... I said to be interested in hearing... if you're not interested, then suggest your own.
- Eh... okay...
The girl's voice sounded doomed.
- ...I just don't understand...
I preferred to keep quiet and give Kiwi time to collect her thoughts a little, and I was afraid of scaring her off. Not that I needed her, at least not as much as Lucy and Becca, who I found very attractive and might try to bring them into my harem in the future, but I didn't consider her a stranger. A good acquaintance... maybe a friend.....
- Faraday gave our group more difficult tasks, many times more difficult! And there we got fifty, seventy grand per plague... and here we get a hundred plus per plague, and that's on top of the fixer's fee, which is on the same level as ours! How come?!
- Mentor, it's simple as hell... you're working loud. Too loud. As far as I know, there's no one in your group who can do anything quietly. I don't count the Ranchers, letting them out in the field seems like a stupid idea to me.
- Hey!
Judy took umbrage at what I said. But I ignored her.
- Because of the loud work, despite the two Ranners you are very limited in time, and you also have to cover the team, because of which the left income passes you by. And it's dangerous to do that with Faraday, because he's got a corporate fight on his hands....
I shook my head while munching on homemade shawarma. The girls in the lunch boxes had the same, and all of them from natural products, as always when it comes to food that I cook. Or very high quality substitutes. The kind that even high-end restaurants can use.
- I work very quietly, which, by the way, is why I get the same amount of money from the fixer for the less high-profile cases as you do for the louder, more complex ones. And how much work do you have to do to get that hundred plus? And the only reason you can work like that is because I don't raise the alarm....once I make a mistake like I did on point three and that's it...no bonus....
- Well, that's a yes...
The Kiwi image nodded its head.
- ...I realise it myself... but what a shame! I've been able to save up for a new deck these days! I was able to go to the Vector clinic in the evening and get my chrome checked and synchronised, because it was starting to fail a bit, and I was able to pay off my debts. And that's despite the fact that I'm not in the big leagues....
- Well, actually, our fixer is the top league... just for some reason people put it below Bestia, Faraday and other similarly loud and not holding their neighbourhood fixers, who sit in the Postmortality. But if that's the big league for you, then I'd like to tell you that we also get orders from fixers from Postmortem. Moreover, according to the schedule we were supposed to work with one of them yesterday, but because of the long assignment I had to give up the task, having given my word that I will contact you after the end of it and fulfil not one, but two orders.
- Wait, you work with postmortem fixers?
- Rarely...
I nodded my head.
- And you turned down work from them, for the sake of...
- Yes, as head of the group, I refused to accept the order.
- Psycho... Tychonya, you're a fucking psycho...
- This psycho has a reputation and I'm not going to leave the job unfinished.
- Fuck... how much we could have raised if....
- Nothing.
- А?
- It's usually the big leagues.
I've done my best to convey how I feel about this naming of orders from Bestia and the other fixers from Postmortem, as well as orders from Faraday.
- ...these are not orders against some gang, they are orders that, usually, indirectly affect the interests of corporations. And that's a lot more dangerous than the segment we're in. It's easier here... if you work quietly, robbing a gang, the most you get is a hit-and-run on the motorway, when a couple of cars catch up with you and try to shoot you... but the corporations... they can really mess up your life, that's why we act strictly according to the order and not a step aside.
- Right...
I sighed because I was out of shawarma. I had to lick my fingers and then wipe them on a napkin.
- Ah-huuuuuuuge...
- Is something wrong?
- Well, they seem to have prepared very well at this point... and in the past they've mostly hired Scavengers, and here we have Malström... with Royce at the helm.
I whistled.
Royce is fucked up... and the fact that they were able to hire Malstrom says they still have plenty of money. Or maybe they offered to synthesise some dope to get their chrome bodies going?
- A lot?
- A hell of a lot.
- Clever girl meant to say fifteen Malstroms, all heavily armed. Judging by the way they move, they all have subcutaneous armour.
I sighed at Lucy's explanation.
- This sucks...
- What, you can't handle it?
- Well, why not...
I shrugged.
- I can handle it, but whether we'll have a bonus tonight is another matter. Royce ain't the Animals or the Scavengers. That bitch knows the business, and Malström is usually in the same network, so we'll have to put a chip in first, by the way Snowflake....
I got out of the car and handed Lucy the bag of splinters.
- ...modify it so that the splinter can send out a false signal. So that no one will realise it's out of range.
Lucy sighed.
- I'll make twenty slivers, just in case, it's good to write the demon only once, then you can just copy it....
- I have some blanks, do you want me to send them to you?
Kiwi looked at her ward, and there was warmth and gratitude in her gaze. Still in our company this bitch began to thaw and turn into a human being. And that's a good thing.
- Come on.
- Work...
I sighed and got back into the car to get out in seven minutes to pick up the chips from Lucy. That's what billets do! Twenty minutes, twenty minutes!
- So, did you get the map?
- Yes... it's somewhat incomplete, as the cameras in some of the rooms just aren't there.....
I nodded.
- I've got good optics, I can see the walls if I need to. I'm off.
Ten minutes I am already in front of the entrance to the most ordinary-looking building. About the same as the one Judy, Panam and I live in. And the doors open in front of me, and I immediately activate Sandy, as the optics tell me that there are two representatives of Malstrom behind her at once.
Slivers into the connectors...
And only after that I'm hard enough, with these chrome-obsessed lunatics, to knock them out and pull them aside. So that they just can't be seen right away. But I'm not shutting Sandy down this time.
It will be hard enough, but the synthetic muscles are already on the mode, and even two or three dozen minutes at the average speed of the sandi, when for ordinary people I am barely visible blurred spot I can withstand. Moreover, to increase the speed is a matter of seconds, of course subjective, not real.
I check the map and the marks on it and sigh sadly. Not only Malström is here, whose representatives are marked in red, but also bandits engaged in making 'shiny things' are marked with shiny dots. And there were quite a few of them here, too.
In general, I would have been happy to break a couple of points of sale, but Regina decided not to send us to destroy them, not so successful solos she has a lot in mind, she kind of even V was going to call. At least mentioned her in conversation, apparently testing my reaction.
What about me, I'm nothing.
V's nothing to me.
Since I rescued her she's been faithfully paying me back, I've been following her progress, which is basically none. Well almost none, she's made it to the middle leagues, but mostly on her own merits and works with Wakako, who gives her work that she can't give to other fics in her neighbourhood, but she doesn't really want to do it herself....
So she found a solo for those jobs....
But unlike me, V and Jackie don't work so intensively and that's why V, as far as I know, barely makes ends meet....
Well, that's what I call it, she actually leads a pretty fun life filled with cheap bars and street food. It's understandable, even working only once a week, she works for Wakako, and they're a three-person crew, she's Jackie and a ringer named T-Bag. With a company like that, even those crumbs are more than many in Knight City make in a month....
Yeah, crumbs.
You're too rich, David, too rich....
I was thinking about other topics and knocked out the representatives of Malstrem, and the bandits who occasionally got caught and moved on the house, so far I had cleared only the ground floor, and I had to clear the second floor, and then go down to the basement.
However, the ground floor didn't give me any problems....
Nor the second. But before the entrance to the basement, I jumped backwards and rolled to the side and even fell out of the acceleration.
- What?! You think you're the smartest?! You think you can just put on a Sandi and be done with it?! No problem?!
Royce was standing there and he just fired at me through the door with some sort of machine gun. It's a good thing it's got decent walls and he didn't hit two walls. It could have ended very badly.
- Why don't you say something, Tihonja?! You think you're superior to me?! You're just a bastard who's got a Sandi! Without him, you're nothing!
- Good girl, Mentor, can you break him?
- No, he's very abruptly disconnected from the mains. He must have realised the rest of us were already out. We didn't realise before. There's no cameras, so we didn't know he was getting ready to shoot, we thought he was just standing there.
- Hmm. Looks like Royce was smarter than I thought. And his optics must be good, at least he can see through walls, because without it he wouldn't have been able to see my blurred silhouette.
I sighed.
- How's work going?
- We're not touching Malstrom, at least not until you give the order, but the bandits have been ripped off, and their laptops are in the works.
- You can break Malstrom too... if they're here, they don't give a shit about anyone else. I don't like drugs, and I don't like the people involved with them.
- Hey, Royce?
After I shouted, shots rang out from behind the door. But what do I care, I was out of range of the motherfucker. Let him shoot in the milk, see if he runs out of bullets.
- What's it like guarding drug dealers? Maybe next time you'll go lick corporate arse. Seems to me the two concepts are pretty close to each other!
- Grrr!
With the growl, gunshots rang out again.
- Why are you being such a baby? Are you offended?
While I was talking, I was only thinking about one thing. Should I keep him alive or not?
Royce is basically a passable character in the canon, and Malström's involvement is pretty poor. No, there are tasks from the fixers, but... Eliminating him won't change much of what's going to happen. Though basically Panam is already with me... Judy is unlikely to take on Parker's bren....
Put another nail in the coffin of canon? Well aside from the fact that V now has a decent, albeit not top-of-the-line chrome...
Shots stopped.
- What? We're out of ammo!
- Get the bitch!
I heard a slight creak in the door, and then I turned on the Sandy, increasing the acceleration power, then calmly ran down the corridor that separated me and Royce. Hmm, and that arsehole decided to throw a grenade. If it weren't for the synthetic muscles, I wouldn't have been able to move at that speed, and that grenade would have been my last, if not the last, argument for retreating.
And so...
To intercept the grenade, which had not even left Royce's hands yet, to throw it quickly and strongly into the distance, then to push Royce slightly with my hand and to pass into the anteroom of the basement, to reduce acceleration, to see how Royce from my push flew in my direction, and fast enough, and the grenade with great speed flew into the distance. Again to increase speed and push Royce, this time to the side and also to move away, so that the splinters on a straight corridor passing through the door did not hit us.
Then slow down and wait for the moment to carefully deliver a couple of blows to Royce, while inserting a splinter into his socket.
Out of acceleration.
- Kha...
Royce collapsed to the floor, but he hadn't lost consciousness yet, though he looked rather pathetic. If I had broken his arms and legs, all he could do now was wriggle on the ground. Of course it's not a big problem for him, if he survives and they find him, they'll just change his chrome and he'll be running again....
Except he won't survive...