Just keep moving.
In the corner of his vision, a flashing red light displayed an alert from his biomonitor. He ignored it. He didn’t need the software to tell him that he had several new holes in him that weren’t supposed to be there. He heard the whine start again, and dove to the side, running wildly down an alleyway. The next moment, the brick wall behind where he’d been crumbled as the minigun tore into it.
No time. No time to worry about that. Got to keep moving. If he didn’t keep moving, he’d be dead for sure when the bastard with the minigun caught up to him. Had to lose him in the streets, somehow.
How the frag did I get into this mess?
*******
Four Hours Earlier:
“You sure about this, Faust?”
Faust looked over to the only good thing in his life from the ‘early days’. “Angel, it is just a meet. New crew in town, looking for some extra muscle. Maybe one job, maybe something regular. You know we could use the money. Redeemer is laid up while the Doc grows him a new arm. You’re stuck at the doss until the little one comes. The Pack are good to go now, but you know how hard it is to get replacement parts for a Medusa. I got to do this. Just one job.”
“And what if you have one of your ‘flashbacks’ and Redeemer or I aren’t there to bring you down?”
The street samurai grimaced. “It’s been four months since the last one. The meds are working. Still have the nightmares, but I can handle those. I’ll be fine.”
They’d still been arguing three hours later, when he left his doss to head for the meet. She only let him go when he promised to keep his biomonitor on, so she could put a sprite in it that would tell her if he got in trouble. Now he was sitting across the table at Aces in Redmond, looking at four identically dressed street samurai (two orks, a troll, and a dwarf, dressed in all black, with black shades on even inside) with identical ware, and (he saw them roll up outside) riding identical bikes, with a greasy elf that looked like a rigger. The tech types all had a certain look to them, and this one had a datajack just at the base of his skull, where the old riggers put them, to make the connection faster. You could never tell with elves whether they were part of the ‘old crowd’ or just newbies looking to claim some street cred, but this one read as an older one. But that didn’t bother him much.
No, what bothered him was the pitch. Seemed Greasy and his men were part of something they called the ‘Cooperative’. To hear Greasy tell it, it was all sunshine and roses. A ‘group of runners who work to more closely coordinate their activities for mutual benefit’, or some such drek. It smelled of bugs to him, but bugs didn’t tend to be so blatant with their recruiting.
“The Cooperative is glad you came to this meeting, Mr. Faust. We look for certain qualities in our associates. You, we believe, have just these qualifications.”
“And just what kind of ‘qualifications’ are those?”
Greasy just smiled in answer to his question, as the four heavies took off their glasses at the same time. All four had identical cybereyes. Blue cybereyes. Then it hit him, as he looked back at Greasy, saw his eyes flash behind his glasses. His green eyes. Oh drek.
Quickly, he stood up. “Sorry, but I’m not interested after all.” And then the three other people in the bar turned. He hadn’t been paying attention to them, since they were minding their business (or serving drinks, in the bartender’s case), but now he saw they, too, had blue cybereyes.
“But we are afraid we must insist, Mr. Faust. Come, resistance is futile. Join the Coop-” Greasy’s words were cut off by an uppercut from Faust, just as he extended his cyberspurs, driving them into the elf’s skull.
“I’m not much of a joiner these days.”
At first, the bar was silent, and Faust began backing away towards the door. Then the Bartender spoke in a robotic, monotone voice, “Control deceased. Implement contingency 1-Alpha.” From under the table he produced a minigun, and began spinning up the barrels. Faust turned and ran for his life.
*******
As he ran down the broken streets, he didn’t bother cursing. He didn’t have the breath for it. It wasn’t the first time he’d felt his age while on a run. He was pushing forty. That was old for a runner. Older still for a samurai. He’d been too slow to dive off his bike when the dwarf came up next to him and unloaded a clip at close range. Armor took care of most of it, but he still got hit. After that, they used the blood trail to hunt him.
He didn’t know where he was going. He vaguely noticed signs saying he was passing through different gangs’ turf. His only hope right now was to draw them into someone’s turf, and hope he could lose the gangers and blue-eyes as they took eachother out. He was too far from any of his safehouses. And they seemed to be working on something more than a tac-net, like they saw everything the others saw.
One of the human ‘patrons’ stepped out of the shadows, but Faust’s wires were practically crispy they were running so fast. His sword was faster than the blue-eye’s, and he was better at using it. They may have numbers and tactics on him, but it seemed like they were all running skillsofts and preprogrammed attack moves. One on one, when he didn’t have to try and keep his bike from flying into a ditch, they weren’t a match for him. It was over in moments, as the man dropped, dead. But he heard the whine closing in on him, and had to keep moving. All he could do was mark the location in his mapsoft so he could return and search the body later.
If possible, he wanted to stop, and try and get the drop on Bartender. He was the most dangerous of the blue-eyes. But he had to bet on them having the same range of vision mods as he did, possibly better. If he stopped, and Bartender read his position, the minigun would tear him apart. There wasn’t anything for it. If it was just a rifle, he could have ducked behind cover and made a stand, held out until help arrived. But the minigun would eat through anything around here in a heartbeat, and then it would be his turn.
He burst out onto a main road, and was face to face with one of the blue-eyed orks! Again he was just a little too slow, too slow to react in time as the ork brought up his shotgun, and fired. As he was knocked off his feet, he saw twin flashes of silver in the moonlight streak out from the side. The ork went down, without uttering a cry, like a puppet with its strings cut. Two of the Pack had blood on their claws, and he was never so glad to see them as now.
He coughed up blood. Ignoring another angry red notice from his biomonitor, he pulled himself to his feet. There would be time for that later. For now, he paid attention to his heads up display. The team’s locations were displayed there. Redeemer was at his doss, but there was a note saying he was astral, and en route. Angel in the van, heading this way, but she had a pair of blimp drones up above doing overwatch. The Pack were closing in on his position, as were the remaining Blue-eyes. Now that he had a moment to breathe, he unslung his Ares Alpha, and gave his orders.
The Pack scattered. With drones on overwatch above, the anti-personnel drones would be able to ambush and eliminate the blue-eyes other than Bartender without much trouble. He had something special planned for him. Faust turned towards a nearby building. As he reached the door, he realized he was limping. At some point he’d twisted his ankle, but the adrenaline and bone lacing had kept him on his feet so far. His breathing was getting ragged now, and he collapsed behind a car, unable to go further. When Redeemer’s astral form materialized beside him, he laid out the plan.
Slowly, he turned, and braced himself against the hood of the car, his eyes unfocusing for a moment. Blood loss. Getting hard to focus. Had to focus, or this wouldn’t work. He took a deep breath, and tried to focus. Then he saw Bartender. This time, he had the drop on him, the spirit of air Redeemer was commanding from the astral unleashing a massive thunderbolt on the bastard, as Faust fired the underbarrel grenade launcher. Boom.
With a smile, Faust slumped against the car, his eyes closed. Got the bastard. He barely registered the audible reports coming in from the others, the rest of the Blue-eyes going down one by one. The last thing he heard as he lost consciousness was the slamming of a car door, and Angel calling his name. I’m sooo dead.
