Please tell me what you think! where I could improve, where it is strong, where I got lingo wrong etc. I look forward to your input!
Year:Day;Hour.Minute:Second
2065:156;20.31:00
Boring, that was the one word that really described her job with the Knight Errant, some others were monotonous, tedious, mind numbingly dull. Naomi pulled up the AR calender to her main screen and flicked it away in disgust. Five years and sixteen days she had been employed by the Knights and aside from a kick ass dental plan, a shitty little flat in a rough neighborhood and a phenomenal craving for something more, she really gained nothing from her job. Just under three more years of hell until her contract was up.
The job really wouldn't be so bad if they let her do what she was good at, coding and cyber-security. She improved the firewall during her first year and her supervisor took the credit and wrote her up for personal use of company resources.
Naomi ensured that the asshole's wife received his private account's records showing quite a bit of activity in the red light district. He was divorced within the year but was still her problem at work. So the district manager received an anonymous tip and some supporting evidence that an employee was using company resources for not only personal use but illegal activities. After a thorough investigation her supervisor was fired and charged with selling company security codes to third parties.
That was the most fun she had at work in the last five years. All she did now was monitor com traffic and ensure the nexi didn't crash. Boring.
As she was pondering how she could liven things up and hate the 14 hour shifts just a a little less her cube-mate Lydia poked her. "Hey Blackwater, check out SOG 6. They're about to hit a novacoke dealer, they're unloading now."
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2065:156;20.31:45
Forgetting her melancholy she left her meat body, went in to VR and connected to the mission feed from SOG 6, the special operations group tasked with narcotics enforcement. Technically nobody was supposed to view this stuff but the SOG commander but since her division kept all Knight com traffic up and secure there was no way to stop them and stay within authorized corporate channels.
The commander of SOG knew they did this. He also knew if all the tech nerds were watching his teams like their own personal action sim and if anything went wrong tech side that it would be fixed faster than a cramhead heartbeat. She connected to the mission feed just as the group was getting out of a Roadmaster parked a couple blocks from the raid. Actually it seemed it was parked right outside her shitty little flat.
Suddenly a little worried she double checked the raid location and the location of the team. She knew the "dealer" they were hitting. Two blocks south of her building, she passed it every day on her way to the subway. She checked the roster and cursed. They were going in with only a five man squad with air support five minutes out. They would likely all be dead in five minutes.
The place they were getting ready to hit looked like it was a simple tattoo shop but she knew better. The building shared walls with the apartment complex on the left and the stuffer shack on the right, to the rear was a small alley that Naomi had never had the courage to walk down at night. There were never fewer than three local toughs hanging out in front of the building and another two or three in the stuffer shack. A week ago, just for fun, she hacked the tattoo parlor's system to see if she could find what a tattoo parlor needed so much firepower for and what she found surprised her to say the least.
The node connected to another that was running hidden with cutting edge encryptions and had some seriously mean security. Once she made it in and poked around a bit she saw the true scope of the operation. The entire first floor of the apartment complex had been turned into a novacoke packaging warehouse. Cybered out goons and automatics to spare, not to mention a few roving drones packing seriously nasty heat and enough nova to stay high for the rest of your life. She had dropped an anonymous tip to the Knights (the programs she was using weren't exactly legal and with her past explaining that would be uncomfortable to say the least). She had given them all the information she had and this is what the assholes send. Five guys. Somebody had fucked up, bad.
She jacked out of the Knight Errant system, grabbed her comlink and her favorite new toy, a simsense accelerator, and jumped back into the matrix. This time she was running hot, which meant that she was faster and more effective but it also meant that damage perceived virtually could translate into damage to her meat body, in the form of brain damage if you took too much. She started with her own home node since she knew they were close and located the team network.
Logging in using the access ID of a regional communications manager in Detroit, she activated her stealth program and quietly took a look around. The team's network virtual topography looked like the inside of an armory with each of the team member's linked hardware in lockers bearing their callsigns, written on olive drab duct tape with black magic marker. The lockers each had an archaic combination lock like what they used during the turn of the century. There was a beefy looking version of a Doberman sentry drone patrolling and a cat sitting on top of the lockers. She didn't want to test her luck with the Doberman which was most likely the security program and moved quietly around it to the locker marked "Steamer" and turned the lock's dial a few times. It popped open and she breathed a sigh of relief, The guy from Detroit was high enough up the food chain that he had access to the SOGs security measures. As fast as thought she unlocked all of the lockers and took inventory of what was available to her. She looked through Steamer's cyber eyes and listened through his ears.
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2065:156;20.32:15
The team moved down the deserted street toward the tattoo shop. It didn't feel right to Axel, an Orc whose facial tattoos and brow spikes were definitely out of regs who was the teams demolition specialist. Even in neighborhoods this rough there should be some sign of life after dark. "Hey Sarge, this feel off?"
Steamer scanned the rooflines with his rifle, "Yeah, they must of made us. Must have watchers. Lets get this show started before they can clear out. Axel, you're up in twenty."
Axel moved to the front of the stack and unfolded the door charge, a plastic frame the size of a door filled with C-12 explosives and remote detonated. Sticking it to the steel door he hurried back to his place in the stack and as the 20 second timer in his AR dropped to 0 he blew the charge. One second later a flashbang was hurled into the room by Red 1, the team's troll and pointman. One second after that it detonated and the team burst into the room looking for targets. Nothing.
Then steel shutter doors dropped from the ceiling behind them. A collective "fuck..." floated through the air. Steamer then took charge of the situation, "Nerd, get in and find out what the hell just happened, get these goddamn doors open. Helix, Red 1, cover the Nerd. Axel, what can you do about this?"
"Nil, I got two water booms, nothin that would cut that. Sorry boss."
"K, come with me we're gonna properly clear this shop."
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2065:156;20.32:28
Nerd dropped into hot sim VR and logged into the tattoo parlor's node. It looked like a hundred other crappy tattoo parlor nodes across NYC, decade old graphics, buggy interaction, a security program that fell with one hit from his sword. He looked around and it was soon clear this was not the node from which those doors were dropped. The shop's security cameras weren't even controlled from here, nor were the locks or the shutter doors. Then he found it, a hidden door under one of the parlor chairs. Going through he gasped at what he saw. The place was a fortress. The firewall appeared as a beach laden with mines and rotting corpses. There was a 16' chain link fence beyond that with machine gun towers every 30 feet or so and barghest patrolling just beyond that.
This was going to hurt. A lot. Not for the first time he regretted taking up the role of team hacker after Jade Dragon died two months ago. He was a trigger man first a hacker second. Of course as soon as he took up the role his team gave him the handle "Nerd" and he forever lost the hard earned "Deadeye".
Running his stealth and exploit programs he waded through the minefield, narrowly avoiding the sweeping spotlights. Once to the fence he found a small gap between the ground and the fence and wiggled through it.
As he emerged on the other side there was a tall figure dressed in a voluminous black robe of smoke with an eyeless head, skin stretched taut and decaying. On either side of him was a hellhound and a drake with fire in their eyes and blood dripping from their maws.
"Hello pig"
He definitely regretted it now.
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2065:156;20.32:40
Going through the trap door under the parlor chair Naomi, or rather Zer0 History, as she was wearing her cybercombat skin now, slipped onto the beach. While Naomi was a 130 pound elf girl with red hair Zer0 History was 10 feet of muscle and death. She looked like a razor toothed, hornless troll with a mean streak a mile wide.
Ahead of her she saw Nerd's icon squeezing under the fence. Idiot! didn't he see it was an obvious trap? She looked down the beach, the backdoor she had left herself a week ago was still there. Running at the speed of thought and dancing through the mine field she made it there, and seperated the links she had "cut." As she emerged she saw a hellhound and a drake pounce on the Knight (which was also his icon, the guy must really love the Knight Errant).
She loaded her own Black IC, two beefy looking humanoids with grey skin and battered armor, and charged. She commanded the two blackout programs, "Dead Soldiers" to attack the ghostly figure that was watching Nerd get ravished by the hellhound and drake and she jumped into the fray. The drake spat a gout of flame at the knight, turning him black, just before her huge fist connected with it's head, cracking it sideways and redirecting the remainder of its flame harmlessly away. The drake turned on her leaving the knight to just deal with the hell hound. It snapped at her tearing a chunk out of her forearm. Goddamn she could feel it, this wasn't a blackout program, one designed to render the target unconscious. This was black hammer, designed to cause physical damage through overloaded simsense signals. She had to beat this thing fast if she didn't want to end up dead or worse, brain dead.
She slammed both of her fists down on the beast's head with a satisfying crack and kneed it in the face, sending it sprawling. Behind her she heard the knight scream and dared a glance back. The hell hound had Nerd pinned to the ground with it's jaws clamped around his throat. She had other problems though and the drake rushed her again, it's flames turning her skin to charcoal and raising blisters the size of fingers all over her body. She moved lightning fast, dip right, right uppercut, left cross followed with a spinning backfist. The drake started to glitch out and as she dove on it it burst into a spray of harmful digital gore.
Skin smoldering she turned back to the knight and the hellhound. The hellhound was still worrying the knight's armored neck but the knight was stabbing it weakly with a dagger in the side. Good, he was still among the living. She tackled the hound off the knight and proceeded to pommel it into non- existence, which didn't take long due to the injuries it had already sustained at the hands of the knight.
She got off the ground and prepared for another attack. The ghost figure was pinned by her orc-like warriors and unconscious. They were doing there job, holding his link open and hitting him in the face any time it seemed he was coming to. When no other attacks came she checked on the knight.
"Who are you?" he gasped through bloody lips and split teeth.
"Zer0 History. Will you be able to continue, your team needs you."
"Heh, are you kidding me? I couldn't fight a vending machine's security right now."
"They're slotted right now, now know that right?"
"No they're fine. They got you. Watch their backs Zer0. You screw them and I'll find you. I'm going back to the meat now."
"K, you gonna be all right?"
" I'll be fine. Now take care of the team, I'll tell them you're coming. Gimme a sec though."
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2065:156;20.32:15
Lydia looked around the feed. Naomi was nowhere to be seen. Had she not heard her? This was about to kick off and was pretty much the only part of the job either of them enjoyed. She jacked out and looked over to her cube-mate. She was jacked into a personal comlink! Not only that but had a strange little device between her and the link. Goddamnit! She was really slotted now. The camera's would have seen that she saw. If she didn't report it she would be out of a job. She shot an urgent message to her team leader and he was at their cubicle in less than a minute.
By then her nose was pouring blood and she was convulsing. The two of them lowered her to the ground and a small crowd started to gather around the cubicle.
"I'm gonna unplug her." Mr Jackson said in a voice that dripped rage.
Lydia was shocked at his stupidity, "Nooooo! She's obviously using illegal hot sim and is already hurt. If you unplug her the dumpshock alone could kill her!"
Rodrick from two cubicles over spoke up,"She's right sir. It's best to see these things through. She'll need medical attention if she comes back. Where did she go?"
Lydia looked up fearfully, "I think she's in the SOG 6 raid."