"Good morning, Regina."
"Hello workaholics."
The girl grinned openly, but she wasn't trying to offend me with that statement, she was just stating a fact. Panam and I did work a lot harder than the other solos, though. Even the way Becca had reacted to our schedule said so.
What can you do if solos in this world tend to drink all their free time and only take up work when the money runs out. But I, and Panam, when we first started working with her, had a slightly different point of view. I didn't want to live from booze to booze, I don't like to drink, and Panam was used to being more responsible in the clan, so she gave the surplus profits to Scorpion or Mitch. And I, wanting to impress the girl, started offering to buy back my trophies from her clan armorer.
"What do we have today?"
"There's an assignment. A good friend of mine let me, he's a former director. He used to be quite popular, but after his last movie he stopped making even short films, he lives on what he wins at cards. Only he was unlucky and in one of the games he even had to lay down an optic... luckily the tiger claws were not interested in ordinary optics, but the claws liked the eye with a built-in professional camera...
"What's our task?"
"I'll drop the address of the place where my friend was playing, you have to go there and get his eye."
"Roger that, has the eye been moved anywhere yet?"
"Then find out exactly where..."
Regina's image shrugged.
"Copy that, go ahead, give me the details."
After a couple seconds, I nodded my head.
"The message has arrived, let's get to execution."
I opened the message from Regina and gave her the coordinates of our destination, and with a roar of the engine, we were off. We had to drive around the city a bit to get to one of the apartments where the card games took place.
My hand went to Panam's knee, to which she only grinned.
"Don't stop me from driving."
"Am I interrupting?"
She cast a leering glance at me.
"Not now. Except if you do."
"I won't. I'm horny, but not horny enough to get in the pants of a girl who's driving a car. But after your permission to hit on you."
I grinned.
"...I just can't deny myself a little thing like that."
"Pfft!"
Except her snort wasn't disgruntled, but more than satisfied with what was going on.
"So, uh. Becca, huh?"
I cast a mocking glance at Panam.
"Well, you've seen her. And you've seen me talking to her."
"Uh-huh...
She sighed and shook her head.
"She's a stickler though, you really don't want to send her away, positive she is."
"That's right..."
Panam jerked the steering wheel sideways away from the car that was about to ram us.
"We're not alone!"
"Fucking claws..."
I drew my gun and activating the sandi looked out of the car to fire exactly two shots. The first into the front tire and the second into the driver.
The claw car wiggled, but it was kept on track, even managed to start slowing down.
"That's not all..."
I glanced at the monitor in the middle of the torpedo, which was now showing what was happening behind me, and a second later shots from some kind of machine gun came at the car.
"Go on, come on, as soon as we're in a reasonably deserted area I'll deal with them."
"That's right, if you respond now civilians could get hurt..."
Panam pressed the gas pedal to the floor and Tortik, roaring the engine, quickly began to gain speed. To the unaware of the technical characteristics of the bikes on which the claws usually ride, it would seem that in this way it would be possible to get away from them.
Except we both knew the technique the claws were riding on and realized that it was only an appearance. An appearance that would disappear in exactly a few seconds, which it did.
One of the claws decided to overtake us...
"Well, you're wrong."
I activate Sandy and leaning out of the window I shoot exactly in the front wheel, or rather not exactly in it, but in the place of hitting which will cause its blocking and as a consequence...
"It went low, probably for rain..."
"Uh-huh, good thing there were no other drivers on that side of us...
With a wild squeal, Tortik activated his brakes, and the claw that was following us crashed into the rear bumper, hitting the closed trunk of the pickup with its body. And immediately the Panama slid forward.
"That's kind of it..."
I looked at the screen and looked around myself before pulling out a clip and refilling it from the ammo I had in the glove compartment.
"Uh-huh...damn claws...
"They don't know we're gonna be robbing one of the bases."
"Uh-huh...
Panam grinned and when I holstered my gun she cast a stern look at me.
"Put your hand back where it belongs."
Grinning I placed my hand on my girlfriend's foot and lightly stroked it with my fingers.
"But, but, but, but!"
"All-in-all...
I grinned and stopped pestering the driver, but I didn't take my hand off the girl's thigh. And that was fine with both of us.
"We're approaching the site."
Panam drove past the house that housed the Claws' underground casino, where the customer had lost so badly that he had to get a good implant to keep his life together. It's actually a pretty common story for this town. The scenery varies, but the essence of what's going on remains the same.
The car slowly turned into one of the yards and then parked.
"Am I waiting here?"
"Uh-huh...
I nodded my head and put a small shield on my face, which completely hid my face from cameras and optics, and from ordinary vision, if of course in this crazy city there will be someone with real eyes, left the car.
Then I pulled a harpoon pistol from my belt and aimed it at the edge of one of the nearest roofs. The thin rope that could hold ten guys like me uncoiled from a small spool with a low whistle, and the harpoon crashed through the wall, sending a fine stone-like crumbling into the street.
"I'm outta here."
Panam did not bother to answer me and I calmly walked along the wall of the house, keeping myself perpendicular to the wall. The small retractable spikes made it easy for me to climb in this way.
A couple minutes and I'm on the roof.
One click on the harpoon and it folded up, allowing me to safely remove it and insert it back into the gun, and then the gun went to my belt. I walked around the roof, looking at the future area of action.
When I noticed a place where I could get from roof to roof, I looked around carefully and took a good run-up and pushed myself off the edge of the roof. I took a couple more steps in the air and landed on another roof. Again I spent some time looking around, but this time I wasn't looking for a way to get to the other roof, but for a place to get down to the fire escape from which I could get to the apartment where the Claws were playing card games.
There was no ladder, but I was lucky that Regina had given me the exact coordinates of the apartment. I pulled out my harpoon pistol and fired it at the edge of the roof, and decided to go straight down the side of the building.
Knight City, the city that never sleeps and where no one ever looks up. It was a city that never sleeps, and where no one ever looks up, either, so I walked down to the seventh of the ten floors and activated my optics, switching them to a mode that allowed me to look through walls.
There was no one on the sixth floor but three claws, and the room I was about to visit was empty, so I went down a little lower and used the opening demon to open the metal shutters that covered the window, but there was still glass, but quietly cutting out a small section near the handle and slipping my hand in to open the window was the least of my problems.
Before I climbed into the apartment, I took another good look around. Two of the Claws are sitting on a chair with their heads thrown back, probably watching some kind of Brain, or recently blown and high. The third one is sitting in a small room, most likely a jolt, and that's where the big trouble could come from.
Sighing I climbed into the room and looked around.
I saw the safe immediately, it stood in a prominent place, and to open it was quick, the same demon of opening forced a simple electronic lock, designed for beginners who have not yet bought a quality demons from the Raner, open and I nodded my head.
No, the eye I'd been sent for wasn't there, but there were tightly rolled wads of money and documents.
With a chuckle, I scanned all the wads of money, which turned out to be a good thing, because two of them were wrapped with technical devices that transmitted some kind of signal. I took everything but those two bundles, as well as all the documents, and then carefully closed the door of the safe, activating the demon again, but this time called to close the door.
Claw was still in the bathroom, but I went to the desk and with the scanner I opened the drawers, checking their contents.
I got a couple of nice pistols from Militech, and a couple more bundles of money, which was even better than the guns. Still, they didn't usually roll less than five hundred bucks in these kind of twists.
When I activated the computer, I froze, because I had time to look around the apartment, and Claw was already wiping himself in the bathroom. I turned off the computer monitor and stood near the wall where the door was located, where there was a convenient niche behind the closet that didn't allow him to see me.
However, my caution was not really necessary, because the claw went to the other room and sat on the sofa in a dozen seconds sat as well as his comrades, leaning his head back.
Bystrov returned to the computer I turned on the monitor and checked the data that was on it and now grinned.
There's an address...
I ran a program on my computer to delete all the data, and then went to the window. There, I took the gun, which I left hanging outside, and then carefully got out of the apartment, closing the window and the blinds behind me. Only then did I start to walk quickly upstairs.
Once on the roof, I pulled out the harpoon and quickly made my way back to the other roof, then used the fire escape to climb down. It didn't go all the way to the first floor, but even so, I just jumped down, as I had the skill to do it properly.
So I quickly made my way to the car.
"Do you have the optics?"
"No, but I have a bunch of documents that the Claws had in the safe. So when we get near the post office, stop, we should send them to Regina. I also collected a bunch of cash, they had, like, ten times what they said they'd pay us."
"Cash?"
"Uh-huh.
"And you took everything, of course?"
"Not all of them, I scanned the cash, saw a couple of twists with beacons inside. So I left those in place, and the rest..."
I dumped the nal from the bag into the glove compartment of the car and Panam whistled in surprise.
"Not a few..."
"Exactly."
I nodded my head.
"But the task is not over yet, I found data on the computer about the bar "Kasu hanten" in Little China, apparently the optics were sent there. So let's get going."
"Uh-huh...
Panam nodded her head and started the car. She didn't have to start the car because she didn't turn it off, and that was part of our strategy. I work quietly, but a situation in which I have to retreat from a battle is not a zero-sum situation, and in such a case even a couple of seconds to start the car could be critical.
I was about to deal with the cash, but Panam leaned over slightly and slammed the glove compartment, which was already filled with the guns I'd stolen from the Claws.
"Panam?"
She sighed and took my hand and placed it on her thigh, blushing just a little.
"Got it, not a fool, a fool wouldn't understand..."
Panam nodded, and I stroked her thigh lightly with my fingers, giving her a satisfied grin. I didn't go any further, though, because she was driving, and the task was far from over.
"How far do we have to go?"
"Well, on the navigator, about twenty minutes..."
"Okay..."
I nodded my head.
"Uh, David?"
"М?"
"And you're okay with that?"
"Hmm? What do you mean?"
"In life? What you're doing? In Knight City?"