"We're in trouble..."
Panam said this phrase when we were on our way back from another assignment. It wasn't a difficult assignment, because Vic hadn't given me permission to work in the field yet, so we only had to take technical orders. Well, sometimes for hacking, if there was access through a public access point...
Not that I can't scatter a bunch of opponents, but Vic has always been a fan of precision and pedantry, so he keeps demanding my appearance at his clinic every other day for checkups and fine-tuning. All I can afford to do is train...
Lots of training...
Just to know exactly what my body can do now.
"Hmm?"
"Two vans, black and gray. have been following us for a couple blocks."
I'm hooked up to Tortik's systems, and we haven't changed cars yet, though we'll get into a new one in a couple of days. It's just about to be modernized, and instead of one turret on the roof, there'll be two, and they'll be hidden in the compartments where cops usually carry drones.
After looking at the vans for a while I sighed.
"Well, that's to be expected..."
"Hmm?"
"We've trampled on too many people's feet. And I'm not just talking about Biotech experimenting on that farm. I'm also talking about Faraday and DeShawn, and the gangs whose bases we've been steadily clearing out. And the Scavengers are cleaned out more often than others, appropriating their chrome..."
"You think it's one of them?"
Lucy had already managed to tap into my systems and was relaying the picture I was seeing to everyone but Panam.
"Who knows? Could just be some fly-by-nighters.
"Do we go with plan A?"
"Yeah, go someplace less civilian. we should have had a shootout on a busy road."
Panam, without giving any sign of it, changed her route a little, but luckily our pursuers did not get suspicious, so in thirty minutes we came to one of the dilapidated neighborhoods of Knight City, where there were almost no inhabitants.
And already there, Panam made a tight turn, turning the car ninety degrees, Becca leaned out the window with a rifle, Judy connected to the machine gun, and Lucy and Kiwi prepared to hack into the enemy systems.
I calmly got out of the car, though I had to walk around the hood of the car to get to the side of the stopped vans.
"Who are you and why are you following us?"
I spoke loud enough to be heard. And to my surprise, a man in a suit emerged from one of the vans. Clearly a parody of a corporatist...
"We're from Faraday..."
"And what do you need?"
"Faraday wants to talk..."
"We don't want to."
"Are you sure about that?"
"I'm sure."
"We can do it the hard way."
This whip snapped his fingers and solos, many solos, fell out of the cars, but it was obvious that he hired them on occasion, as there was no standard in armament, no organization, nothing at all.
"Is that supposed to scare me?"
"There are fewer of you..."
I sighed.
"Smaller, but we're several orders of magnitude better. We'll take you down and we won't even scratch."
"You're taking on too much!"
It was shouted by one of the solos, and apparently to scare me, he pulled the trigger. The bullet flew not far from me and hit Tortik's armor...
"I didn't start this..."
I shook my head.
"Wha..."
We're probably being followed. Maybe the machines are transmitting data, because I don't believe Faraday would hire a rabble like this for nothing. So we'll use the sandies to the level that normal sandies on the street allow. Thankfully, Vic and I have worked this out and I know it's enough to use my sandi at only twenty percent...
Yeah, it's a far cry from the speed I'm used to. I'm moving fast now, but at the same time, my opponents are not frozen statues. They can probably see my residual image smeared behind me, and I can see the bullets they've already started firing toward where I was and toward my girls.
They're obviously not trained to work together... and they're scum who don't care about their comrades...
How did I know that?
I simply shifted to the side and those who tried to hit me shot their negotiator in bursts... Despite the unusually slow speed of movement, although it was more because of it, I could see the shock, fear and incomprehension that was slowly creeping into his face. But I had no right to stop...
So is prying into opponents...
Why?
So Becca and Judy are having fun! If I fly toward the enemy now, they'll have to cut off their fire, and so... I just pretend to head towards them, but they keep me at a distance with their bursts, while the machine gun controlled by Judy and Becca reap a bloody harvest.
Thirty seconds of real time...
That's how long it took my girls to take out all the enemies and that's when I turned off the sandi. Moans and screams of pain hit my ears, but I ignored it and calmly headed towards my opponents. Chrome still works for a couple minutes after its user dies... so there's plenty of time to catch up... if it's installed correctly. Of course a couple of minutes is not enough... but there are survivors among the opponents...
The same negotiator is lying there moaning in pain...
He was my first target. As I approached him, I put a splinter in his socket... The same procedure was applied to all the surviving solos, as well as to the on-board computers of the cars they had arrived in. Then I waited. However, I didn't have to wait long, and soon the girls reported that they were done and the data was handed over to me. So I moved on to mopping up the loose ends...
Pull out all the splinters. take control stabs to the head, so as to do a hundred percent brain damage, after which I finally got to Tortik and nodded to Panam.
"Home."
"Home to us or home to the clan?"
"А..."
I waved my hand.
"...however you want to do it. Seems to me, since we've done a little work on Hippo we have a pretty high standard of living here and there."
"Well, that's right..."
Panam nodded her head.
"...I honestly didn't realize life in the clan could be so comfortable. No, Saul, when we were on our way to Knight City, he promised me that the standard of living would be WOW! But in reality."
Panam got a little distracted from driving the car and looked at me and waved her hand.
"...if it wasn't for you, I wouldn't have known it could be like this. No one would have known. Yeah, we're still a little tight, but now that we've converted one Behemoth into a full-fledged sauna with showers. we can say that the standard of living has risen to an unattainable height...
"Well, I have to admit that compared to our first visit, Aldecaldo's has really become a nice place to be now..."
Judy nodded her head.
"City girl..."
Panam snorted, which brought smirks to the lips of everyone present.
"And proud of it!"
Judy stuck up her nose pretentiously proudly.
While the girls were talking, I was checking out what I'd gotten. Well, there wasn't much data, except that Faraday had actually hired them. Except he didn't pay them an advance, and the solos weren't that rich. It was clear from their outfits, though.
But even so, I divided up all the funds I received and sent the girls their shares, naturally taking into account how much I had spent on them lately.
"There you go again..."
Lucy shook her head.
"Lucy, don't talk, think about hacking into corporate chips. You haven't cracked a single one yet. You were so cocky! We'll do anything! You can count on us!"
"The ice turned out to be much stronger and more cunning..."
"It's all excuses. you work... Kiwi is about to pay another installment to Faraday..."
"I've got the money for it so far..."
Kiwi hurriedly stepped into the conversation.
"Kiwi, the key word in your statement is "For now". This month you have something to pay, I'm sure you will pay next month and the month after that, and then? So work hard, remember that our well-being depends on it. Cracking those chips can give us a steady income independent of orders.
"We remember that..."
Judy joined the conversation.
"Okay, well. the data you found confirms that Faraday sicced these solos on us. Except so far, he's in his own right."
"А?"
"Well..."
To the girls' surprise, I shrugged my shoulders.
"...he probably chose the performers on purpose so that we couldn't separate peacefully, but that's unprovable, and the orders he gave... there's no mention of an attack."
"And we're going to let that go unanswered?"
"Becca, what can we do?"
Becca belligerently ran the thumb of her right hand across her throat.
"Uh-huh... and turn all the fixers in town against us?
Becca pouted.
"Although..."
"What?"
Everyone looked at me surprised and somewhat interested.
"We can try to pull one thing off..."
I covered my eyes and summoned Regina.
"Is something wrong?"
"Well. let's just say Faraday started to act. Technically, we can't charge him with anything, the executor attacked us against the order, but the kind of executors he picked..."
"So he's acting out. What do you want me to do?"
"Well, uh. let's just say. I'm willing to compromise some of my principles on the work I take on. And if, out of the blue, there's a reasonable person willing to pay for the big trouble... that Faraday will get into."
"Exactly what's the problem?"
"Well, elimination also fits..."
My image must be smiling quite anticipatively right now.
"Hmm. Well, I'll see what I can do about that. You're gonna give Bestia a hard time, too?"
"Why not?"
I shrugged.
"You have different contacts and may well be able to get double for Faraday."
"Crafty. Well, I'll see if anyone I know is willing to pay for Faraday's problems or life."
"Thank you..."
I cut the connection and immediately contacted Bestia.
"Quiet?"
"Bestia. question, do you have an order for Faraday?"
"Uh, uh. just like that, straight ahead? No coming around corners?"
"You know me, I know you...why beat around the bush when we both don't really like that sort of thing?"
"I guess Faraday crossed some kind of line?"
"Hired solo..."
And I told Bestia about the clash with the solos that Faraday had sent to "negotiate". Bestia only grinned as she listened to the details.
"He's in his own style..."
"Hmm?"
"It's not a very popular topic... and he rarely gets turned down, but it's his usual strategy. It's how he gathers data on those he'll soon be hunting. Be prepared for two or three more such checks, and then it's time for a full-blown confrontation...
I shrugged.
"Well, I'm not gonna show him my capabilities. so I doubt he'll be able to adequately assess our capabilities. And I'm still hoping you know someone who can pay for his life."
"Well... I kind of do. I'll have to talk to a couple of reasonable people."
"Then I'm waiting..."
"Uh-huh...
The connection's been severed.
"So?"
Lucy was the first to notice that I'd opened my eyes. I didn't have to close my eyes when I was talking, and I didn't do it during work, but in my normal life... It was a call from my past life, where there was no such technology and I didn't have such opportunities, and so I constantly covered my eyes, just to focus on my interlocutor.
"Dropped off the fishing rod to Regina and Bestia, I think we'll have an order for elimination soon..."
"You've had enough?"
"It's not like they've got it..."
I shook my head.
"...I just don't like to be pushed around like this. And Bestia said that Faraday is used to this kind of tactic and that we should wait a couple more tests before he gets serious..."