Free Web NovelThe Scavengers thought the night was a free-for-all cyberware smorgasbord. Take one, take them all. The people they had bribed to keep them informed on events going on in the city, had really come through for them. They descended upon the city in droves, their beat-up cars that were dusty from travelling through the badlands, really made them stand out inside the city limits.
Normally, they would have worried about that and would have cleaned them up a little, since it was so obvious that they were Scavs; but, with no cops around to chase them out or to scare them away from such easy prey, they had the run of the city. Or so they thought.
Bright red beams cut through their caravans like a hot knife through butter. Scores of them died without even knowing what happened to them or their fellow Scavs. The few larger armored vehicles they had brought, held several groups of Wraiths that were eager to enjoy the fun part of the evening, namely looting and things of a sexual nature that were offensive to everyone that ever existed.
They were the unlucky ones and were pretty much cooked alive when the red beams hit them and their fuel tanks exploded. The thicker armor plates kept most of the heat and pressure inside the vehicles and it wasn't a pretty sight. Before the smell could go farther than a few feet, all of the remains floated up into the air and disappeared.
*
“Code Red. Lock everything down.” Adam Smasher ordered right after Veder had left.
The building's VI immediately initiated the protocol and the entire building went into lockdown. All doors were locked and all windows were covered in the protective metal shutters. Adam didn't bother to consult with the executives still in the building about it, or the other people still there, because he was the head of security.
“Any AVs still out are to land in protected areas and remain there.” Adam continued. “Assemble all security teams still onsite. I want 2 men on every floor guarding everything. No unauthorized movement is allowed.”
“Yes, sir!” The men saluted and several of them rushed to complete his orders.
Adam walked into the main security office and deactivated a particular set of cameras using his security code. He went back out to the elevator and stepped inside with a large group of men. He remained silent as the elevator stopped at each of the floors and dropped 2 men off. By the time the elevator was a quarter of the way down the building, only Adam Smasher was left inside.
The elevator didn't stop on any other floor after that and went right down into the restricted basement level that only he and three of the company's top executives were allowed to access. Saburo Arasaka himself, his son Yorinobu, and his daughter Hanako. Since it was the night shift, no one was at the access console and the security cameras watching the area had already been turned off.
Adam walked over to the console and the chair there was shoved out of the way. His bulky armor wasn't fit for sitting, so he stood beside the console and pulled out a connection plug. He attached it and was immediately asked for access verification by the digital fortress and its defense systems. His security pass and digital signature were accepted and he was in. If he had lips, he would have smiled.
*
Veder sent a message to Delamain and asked him to help Atlas cover the city. When the AI asked why, he said Atlas had a huge ship and he couldn't be everywhere at once. People were being attacked all across the city and it would be quite helpful to have several hundred Delamain taxis and limos going around and stunning the gang members and rioters.
Delamain wasn't stupid to do something like that for free, since he was putting his only means of making money on the line in a city-wide war zone. He politely asked for another hundred armored limos and 10 more APCs to be delivered. He would work hard to get as many civilians and innocents off of the streets as he could, then he would also use his new means of invisible attack to deal with the criminals costing him so much revenue. Veder had laughed at that last part and agreed.
Thus started Delamain's campaign of silent takedowns of anyone wearing any kind of gang colors, markers, tattoos, or drove similar vehicles that were also similarly marked. Surprisingly, the stun setting actually caused small disruptions in a car's electronic systems. He soon discovered that multiple beams knocked the engine out completely, so that's what he did.
The cargo hauler didn't do its normal lumbering flight this time. It flew at the same pace as the APCs and dropped off the new racks of limos at Delamain's main office where his mainframe was. Another quick trip was made and 20 more APCs were delivered, which was 10 more than what Delamain wanted.
The AI didn't bother asking what Veder wanted for them. He could find that out later. Time was of the essence and he started to quickly install copies of himself into everything. He sent them out as quickly as he could and each of them would save more individual lives in a single night than the entire police force had in ten years.
One of the first places his taxis reached was a turned over bus. When Delamain opened his doors and offered emergency rides home for free, the 6 cars that had stopped were quickly filled and drove off to their various destinations. Gunfire pinged off of the hoods and windshields after they travelled barely a block and his passengers screamed and ducked, only to realize nothing had penetrated.
“You can thank Atlas Incorporated for the safety features on all of my new vehicles.” Delamain told them and drove on.
Various gang members, both major and minor, tried to stop the limos and taxis full of people by shooting at the tires, the windows, the engine, and anything else they thought could slow them down. They even tried improvised spike strips made of different materials, jagged metal, nails, glass shards, and anything else they could toss into the road to block their progress.
At one point, the Tyger Claws had moved a garbage truck and several dumpsters into the middle of the street to block them.
“I guess it's time for a different tactic.” Delamain said and slowed his cars down.
“No!” “Don't stop!” Several of his passengers shouted.
“I'm only making room for the heavy hitters.” Delamain told them.
Two of his brand new cherry red APCs swooped down, briefly landed on their wheels in front of the obstacles, then zoomed forward and smashed right through the garbage truck and the dumpers as if they were made of tissue paper. Both his passengers and the various gang members watching were stunned.
“Amateurs.” Delamain said and shot at each and every gang member as he drove by.
The APCs took off again and continued their own search and rescue operations on the upper floors of the walkways of the city. One even stopped to pick up a mother and her son that had been hiding on a broken escalator. A smaller gang of thugs with skull tattoos had spotted them trying to sneak around and the mother and son had taken two of them down. The rest had pulled back and now had them pinned with occasional gunfire.
Delamain parked in the air in front of the bullets and opened the side door for them. “Hop in. I'll get you home.”
The mother and son exchanged looks and then the mother picked the son up and jumped across the short distance and into the back. Delamain wasn't surprised by the action and calmly closed the door. He asked where they lived and he turned the APC towards the gang and dropped them all with invisible stun beams.
“Was that an EMP or something?” The boy asked, excitedly.
“Something like that.” Delamain said and lifted off into the air once more and joined back up with another him to continue shooting the rioters on the upper levels. He only felt a little bad when a couple of them fell to their deaths when the other rioters freaked out about some of the dropping unconscious for no reason and pushed everyone out of the way to flee.
“If the city wasn't going to drek, I'd say this was nova!” The boy exclaimed.
“John!” The woman gasped.
“Sorry, mom.” The boy said automatically, not sorry at all.
When the taxis and APCs crossed the main portion of Sixth Street, a little nervously, because Delamain knew the gang carried military grade ordinance. An RPG or something similar would make short work of him and his passengers. To his surprise, there were no Sixth Street gang members at all. It was all Tyger Claws that were posturing, celebrating, and tearing down the rival gang's signs and markings.
So, Delamain did what he pledged to do. He gathered more of his taxis and limos together in the area and shot them all. Every single Tyger Claw dropped where they stood, some in mid-dance and a lot of them downing a bottle of alcohol. He sent the GPS coordinates of such a huge concentration of gang members to Atlas and then also updated him on everyone he had shot before and where.
Atlas thanked Delamain enthusiastically for all his hard work and said the extra 10 APCs were well worth it for the increase in efficiency Delamain had achieved with them. That made Delamain smile and he also realized that was what Atlas had wanted. To make his efforts matter a lot sooner than any of them thought they could be.
*
A lot of the police officers that had been fired, felt betrayed and also afraid. They had lost their jobs over something stupid and they were sure that anyone who knew them personally were going to blame them for abandoning the city, even if it wasn't their fault.
When that message had appeared, they almost sighed with relief. Their family members also felt relief, because they also started to think it was their fault for getting fired over something so stupid. It brought them a little closer together, because they felt bad that they started to think that way about the people they loved and now they knew they were wrong to judge them harshly like that.
During the second hour of the unofficial siege of the city, all of the fired police officers received an exclusive contract from Atlas Incorporated that offered them a similar job to the one they had when working for the police, except it had better benefits, free cyberware and armor upgrades, free dental and medical care, and access to better vehicles and more flexible hours.
Nearly every single person accepted the offer without negotiation. The only holdouts were about 20 or so that were still informants for the various gangs across the city or for the executives of another corporation. They spent a few minutes passing the info along to their sources and then they tried to accept the digital contract, only for it to freeze and then delete itself.
Most of them thought it was timed and they had missed their brief window of opportunity and cursed themselves for it. In reality, it was because their actions had been monitored and hiring obvious spies was not something Atlas Incorporated was going to tolerate.
None of the ones hired were to leave their homes until someone came to pick them up. When they did, they would dress in the new equipment, clearly marked with the Atlas Incorporated logo of a stylized golden Earth globe, and then they would scour the city for all the people that Delamain hadn't already put down.
The city was huge, so there was a lot of work to do to fix things and to get everything back on track. Night City was going to survive, no matter what. However, it was once again their job to make sure that as many citizens made it through the night as possible.
*
“Fuck, I can't believe we're hitting Biotechnica again.” Rebecca complained. Despite being one of the gang's heavy hitters, she was a petite little thing just over 5 feet tall, with pale light-blue skin, neon teal hair in pigtails, and her eyes were green with the pupils red and the whites of her eyes were red as well. She was biosculpted to perfection to keep her body fit for combat and to use her extensive cyberware implants that let her carry and use heavy weapons, like her favorite shotgun.
“They killed Sasha.” Maine said and his huge bulky body barely fit inside their vehicle. He had the most obvious cyberware out of all of them and he was very slowly slipping into cyberpsychosis, which they all helped with by keeping him grounded in reality. “With the city tearing itself apart, getting paid to do what I've wanted to do for almost a year, made this the best time to do it.”
“You never told us who hired you, boss.” Pilar asked. He was the gang's mechanic and techie. He was also Rebecca's brother and was an asshole to everyone, even her sometimes. She still loved him, though. His black mohawk made him stand out as much as his long gold colored cybernetic arms did.
“Client confidentiality.” Maine said and they all laughed. “It came through Padre. The Aldecaldos are in talks to strike a deal with Biotechnica and they want info about how screwed over they're going to be when they accept.”
“Jesus, the fucking gonks aren't even gonna negotiate?” Dorio asked. She was their combat specialist and was nearly as tall as Maine at close to 7 feet, was almost as muscular, and was mistaken as a man constantly. Her short white hair and masculine looking face didn't help any, either. She also strapped her large breasts down to keep them out of her way while she worked, which was pretty much all the time.
“No one ever said Nomads were smart.” Maine said with a smirk and they all laughed again.
“Did you ask Panam about it?” Lucy asked. She had the most normal skin color of all of them; and yet, her hair was cut asymmetrically and was a pastel rainbow of dyes. She was also their main netrunner, with Kiwi as the backup and support as Lucy's mentor. “She was an Aldecaldo, wasn't she?”
“Panam almost punched my face off when I tried to talk to her about it.” Kiwi answered. She was a very tall and slender woman, who wore a red mask over the bottom half of her face to hide the fact her entire jaw was missing and had been replaced with cybernetics, as was a good portion of the rest of her body. She was heavily chromed and hid most of it under a long red trenchcoat.
“No way.” Falco said. He was the least cybernetically enhanced of them all and was the gang's driver. His distinctive moustache always twitched with amusement when he was the one that always seemed to get them out of the worst situations with his expertise and skills behind the wheel. He could drive and still maintain his part of team discussions, too. “You let a baby merc swing at you? For shame.”
That made a few of them laugh and kept the mood ligh in the vehicle, despite the situation.
Pilar lightly punched Falco's shoulder. “How did that nova burn feel, bitch!” ƒrēewebnoѵёl.cσm
Falco twitched his moustache at him and Pilar laughed again.
Kiwi rolled her eyes at them. “I said almost, you gonks. I dropped her and stepped on her face while I warned her that not everyone would let her off so lightly for breaking the truce at a bar Mama Welles was in charge of.”
A lot of the gang members exchanged satisfied looks at hearing that.
“What did the bitch say?” Rebecca asked.
“She objected to the deal she knew was gonna screw her family over. When they wouldn't listen to her, even as they argued about it among themselves, she left the Aldecaldos to become an independent merc.” Kiwi answered.
“So, we know they're going to get fucked over, just not how much.” Rebecca said.
“That's right. We're gonna find out everything we can when we get in there.” Maine said and nodded at Lucy. “We'll watch your back as you work and Kiwi will jack in as overwatch, just in case.”
Lucy felt grateful for that and glanced at Kiwi, whom nodded.
“We got this.” Pilar said and held up a gold colored hand and snapped his fingers with a soft metallic clang. “We got this by the balls.”
“Fucking right we do.” Rebecca said and caressed her shotgun nicknamed Guts. She also had a Masamune Assault Rifle strapped across her back and an Omaha tech pistol hidden under her large jacket. Her eyes went to Maine's and she firmed her face up into a similar stern look and nodded.
Maine nodded back and he knew his crew did not take Sasha Yakovlena's death lightly. They didn't know what to do about it, though. Biotechnica was a worldwide corporation and the scandal Sasha revealed about them intentionally killing patients with poisonous drugs didn't harm their reputation at all. Their stock prices dropped for a couple of weeks and then went right back up. That was it.
Not this time. Maine thought. This time, we're making sure Biotechnica remembers what they did.
The vehicle pulled up into a back alleyway near the corporate HQ for Biotechnica. With all of the chaos going on around the city, their Chevillon Emperor, a large armored multi-terrain vehicle that could fit them all inside, didn't even rate a first look, let alone a second.
They all emptied out of the thing, weapons ready, and a few of the crew stealthily approached their target. A maintenance door near the back of the building that only the janitorial staff ever used. Maine, Dorio, and Rebecca ignored stealth, since they sucked at it, and walked at a normal pace.
Lucy plugged into the security pad beside the door and hacked it. Two seconds later, the door clicked and swung open. She received several nods of silent praise and she stood there to wait for them all to enter before she entered herself and locked the door behind them.
Instead of going down into the labs like she thought they would, they went up the stairs towards the corporate offices of the high tier executives. Padre's info told them who was the primary negotiator for the deal with the Aldecaldos and they had to find her office. A quick stop at a security station let Lucy silence the alarms, spoof the security cameras, and gave her the info they needed.
Anyone they came across was dealt with as silently as possible. They didn't want any gunshots to alert anyone that might still be around after seeing that warning about the Police Commissioner firing all of the night shift officers and had left everyone unprotected.
Pilar took point when they reached the right floor and his sister came up behind him to support him. They cased the entire floor, just to make sure no one was around, and they waved Lucy forward when they found the right office. Maine handled the door by gently pushing on it to open it, despite the heavy electronic lock holding it closed. Removing the door negated the need to hack a bypass for the lock, too.
A couple of the crew chuckled at his simple solution and Lucy ran inside and quickly went to work. Kiwi stood beside her, her own connection cord piggy-backing on Lucy's, and they both delved into the encrypted cyberdeck to suss out its secrets. After a few minutes, it started to feel like it was taking too long.
“Come on, come on.” Rebecca whispered anxiously as the time ticked on. “We're sitting ducks here.”
Pilar lightly touched her shoulder to comfort her and she gave him a thankful look.
“Got it.” Lucy finally said and both Kiwi and her pulled out their connection cords and Lucy popped the chip from her neck and handed it to the crew's leader.
Maine plugged it into his own neck and seemed to still.
“That bad?” Dorio asked, her husky voice full of concern.
“They're fucked.” Maine said and popped the chip out to hand to Kiwi. “If they take the deal, they become indentured servants to the bastards for life. Barely 25% of their usual fees for hiring them as mere muscle, with no specialties or skills. There's no medical care or cyberware maintenance, either.”
“Holy fuck, that sucks.” Pilar said as they moved out of the office. “What are they getting for giving up their freedom and becoming corpo lackeys?”
“Access to food growing equipment and some seeds for them to try and cultivate out in the badlands.” Lucy said and shook her head at their stupidity.
“They're trading away their independence and lifestyle just for the chance at growing their own food?” Rebecca asked. “Stupid fucking gonks.”
Maine entered the stairwell and they all followed. They went up to the highest executive floor, while also staying away from the department director's offices. “This is pure reconnaissance and then sabotage. No risk, no reward.”
Both Lucy and Kiwi nodded. One went one way and one went the other. They chose what they thought were good entry points to find the dirt they needed and hopefully access to one of the company's mainframes. If they could get that, then they could do some serious damage to the company that took Maine's favorite netrunner from him. freeωebnovēl.c૦m
“Okay, people. Let's have some fun wrecking the place.” Maine said as soon as Lucy and Kiwi sent the signal that confirmed they were in. The rest of the crew cheered and started tearing everything up.
