Just my periodic maintenance every other week reduced the daily psychoactive medication needed by the aggregate population in the building by four-fifths. They weren't all bunnies and rainbows here, but they were a lot more sane than they used to be.
"Boss, I'm pretty sure that the Voodoo Boys let these jokers through. This is a Maelstrom cell that had taken over part of South Pacifica. The Haitians had kept them bottled up until now..." Mr Shadow reported although he sounded very amused when saying "Boss."
Having both my bodies there was a bit to get used to. I wanted to sigh but realised that it would come out of my original body, so instead, I just had the Dragoon shake my head, then said, "We can worry about that after. Anyone else coming?"
It turned out that in addition to Mr Shadow, four other Borgs were coming. I didn't force anyone to fight here. Not even in defence of the building. Their psychological condition wasn't ready for that, if I wanted them to have some chance of actual recovery. Still, a lot were so used to fighting that them going cold turkey was just as bad, so I didn't stop them, either.
As the group of Borgs left, I went into the clinic on the bottom floor as Taylor to wait. There might be some casualties. Well, there would be casualties, but there might be some on our side this time.
As the Dragoon, I eyed one of the volunteers as we all ran out of the building, "You're recently from 'Strom. You okay going against your former boys?" I didn't want him possibly questioning his loyalty during the fight.
The guy nodded rapidly, "I know these assholes. I need to come. Otherwise, you might let a couple of these guys go, or worse, invite them to be my neighbour."
Ah. I wasn't sure if I liked that the Dragoon had a reputation as a softie, though. I was trying to go the other direction. We all ran really fast, and I had already lost sight of Mr Shadow.
As we got closer, I activated my e-war system, causing white noise to be transmitted on many frequencies from my body. This was more intelligent than simple jamming, as I still would be able to transmit outside. It was carefully scheduled jamming. If I needed to transmit, e-war suite would allot me a period of a couple of milliseconds where I would be able to transmit on my desired frequency band.
It reduced the bandwidth I could use by a lot and increased latency due to the schedule, but it totally ruined both most incoming wireless hacking attempts and SmartGun locks.
"Stay within ten metres of me if you don't have SmartGun jamming yourself," I transmitted to each of them and got a thumbs up from everyone.
As we turned the corner, the e-war system briefly allowed my synthetic aperture radar system to irradiate the street, identifying targets. I was just doing this for thoroughness since I had a real-time optical feed from a drone that was loitering a few hundred metres in the air.
However, I was glad that I did. I transmitted to our group chat, highlighting four areas near the ongoing firefight, "Four stealthed enemies."
I attempted to select each of them as a target but frowned. They were jamming the SmartGun system as well. I supposed they would have had to. The Smart 12.7mm HMG on my shoulder was well known by now. It was the first weapon I used because it was so simple to mow down a group of enemies.
Still, that didn't make it useless. I targeted the area one of the stealthed guys was at and began sprinting, pulling the mental trigger. The machine gun was gyro-stabilised, so no matter how wild my movements were, the barrel stayed where I originally pointed it.
I hosed down the general area with armour-piercing rounds and scored a hit while the rest of my men opened fire on the dozen or so people who were still firing into the building. My boys had them enfilade, and if it wasn't for these four stealthed ambushers, I would have thought they were dumb.
The three remaining ambushers began to drop stealth and level large weapons in my general direction. One of them never got the chance to point it, as Mr Shadow dropped on him from above. The same Mr Shadow somehow bypassed all my jamming to send me a message, "Those are home-on-jam RPGs. Recommend immediate EMCON."
My eyes widened, and I had about half a second to think about that, so I briefly increased the framerate of my mind running on my crystalline computer by about ten times. Over a long period, this would cause damage to my organic brain, but for a second or two at a time, it would be fine. I wouldn't lose synchronicity from a brief difference, although I might have to take a neural anti-inflammatory later, that would be all.
Those weapons certainly appeared to be RPGs. There were so many types of rocket-propelled grenades, and very few had any guidance whatsoever. It kind of defeated the purpose of the weapon as a super cheap, short-ranged anti-armour system to add expensive guidance electronics.
But one of the guided heads was an anti-radiation one. It was mainly used to destroy SHORAD radar systems, but it would do a number on my body, too.
Right before they opened fire, I locked out and deactivated all radios on the Dragoon body and took cover behind a large panelled van. It was the only vehicle large enough that I could actually hide behind, even crouched.
One of the rockets passed over my head and exploded when it struck the side of the building, while the other hit the car I was hiding behind and exploded there, showering me with dirt, chunks of road and small pieces of van.
I was safe behind the van, mostly. These weren't anti-armour systems, really. They were just normal high-explosive warheads with built-in fragmentation, ideal for wrecking a radar system, but they still would have ruined my day if even one of them hit me in the wrong spot.
Instead of peeking my head out, I used the orbiting drone to look for anything else that could threaten me. There wasn't, so I stood and immediately started firing my machine gun, hopping over the van and shifting myself into full battle mode. I only had about fifteen minutes of operation going full-tilt like this, but I didn't need more than two to finish these guys off.
I used the machine gun to keep their heads down while pulling out my Burya in one hand and sword in the other. I just leapt over their "cover", taking a few hits to my armour from their small arms while descending amongst them, blasting one guy's head off with the giant Soviet pistol while taking another's head off with my sword.
After that point, I had the Dragoon go wild, and it wasn't more than thirty seconds before the rest of the enemies were put down.
The Maelstrom guys didn't try to surrender, and they fought to the last man, which was a lot more unusual than you'd think.
One of the guys who came with me glanced at the spots where the hidden ambushers had been and said, "I think maybe they were trying to get you, boss."
Ah, I had a genius here. But he was right. They also knew enough that I used jamming in every battle if they chose guided anti-radiation rockets, too.
I called Kiwi and said, "I think it is clear. You guys can come out."
I walked over to the shot-up front of the building and met three people poking their heads out. One of them was Kiwi, along with one of her lieutenants.
Kiwi growled, trying to stop one of them from fussing at her as she had a wound to one of her arms and asked, "Status?"
"One KIA for sure, and three more that are 300," her lieutenant said in a Russian accent. The large Slavic man reminded me wistfully of my old friend whom I had to kill. He then glanced at her and said, "Make that four."
Kiwi swore and said, "We're evacuating the building for now. We'll return in a couple of hours, but I don't think their goal was to attack our charges anyway. Let's transport the wounded back to Saint Cog's." Then she glanced outside and widened her eyes, swearing again, "Fuck! Our van!"
Oops. Haha, that didn't have anything to do with me.
"Three more vans will be here in two minutes. All 'round defence until it gets here, then we go," she ordered, and her men saluted her sharply. I raised my eyebrows. She had come a long way, I thought, from the mostly amateur merc that I remembered doing jobs with.
"Herr Shadow," I called out and jumped as he was suddenly next to me. I tried to play that off and turned to tell him, "Please investigate this. This was a good ambush, but it wasn't enough."
He nodded. He had started affecting a slight German accent, which amused me, "Ja. Another group of Maelstrom were annihilated short of your territory. Quite short."
I had no idea how he knew these things when my aerial surveillance didn't see them. Still, I nodded, "So it was going to be a two-prong attack? Were they going to pincer us here or attack the base?"
"Base, probably. An ambush of a single target by two separately moving units..." He shook his head and continued, "It has too many moving parts and is the type of tactic you'd see in a film and not reality," he said with a shrug.
I didn't have that much military experience. I mean, I was acquiring right here and right now, but what he said made sense. A pincer attack was one of those things that sounded clever but ended up getting you defeated in detail.
Several vans were pulling up, and I asked him, "Who helped us out?"
Mr Shadow forwarded me a small clip that was clearly from a stationary surveillance camera. It showed a group of a dozen heavily armed Borgs jogging down the street.
Out of nowhere, a large green AV-48 swooped in and tore them, and the road to pieces with two large thirty-millimetre cannons. Just as quickly, the aircraft flew away and I paused on a still image of the side of the aerodyne.
It was obviously a NUSA Army aircraft. It still had the "NUS Army" stencilled on the side, except someone added in spray paint "NOT" right before it. As such, it said, "NOT NUS Army" on the side.
"That was clearly NOT a NUS Army aerodyne," I said wryly, "It says so right on the side, there."
Herr Shadow chuckled. It was like the engine on an old lawnmower. Once... twice, then continuously. It was the first time I had ever heard him laugh.
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Unification
January 2068
EBM Petrochem Stadium
"Loveboat 5, mission complete, we're RTB..."
Kurt Hansen listened to the pilots on the tactical net report that the interdiction mission he sent them on was completed successfully. He wasn't expecting a different result, as gangs in the area wouldn't start investing in possible MANPADS unless he stayed here longer term. Even then, the corps kept such things pretty restricted. When you flew to work in an aerodyne, you didn't want the plebes to have ways to shoot them down.
He saw the questioning look that Major Giffords gave him and grinned at her. She wasn't his XO but had been acting in that capacity ever since those suits from Militech showed up. He had detailed Lieutenant Colonel Garcia to take independent command of a company of Pathfinders to guard the Militech suits and scientists-and to keep an eye on them. This was a waste of his talents, for sure, but he thought it was necessary as Garcia was the only one in his command that he trusted one hundred per cent. The Major was a close second, though.
He had a bad feeling about the entire thing. What could be so important about a pre-DataKrash site that necessitated assistance from his unit? It had not come down the normal chain of command, either. It made him think that there was something incredibly important there or that he was being screwed over. Or both. Allegedly, 1st ID, along with elements of the 101st, were going to be surging north "at any time."
Still, it wouldn't surprise him if his entire mission was more along the lines of a threat or feint. There was no military reason to take a beachhead and then sit on his heels for weeks. It was only the timidity of the Night City "forces" that stopped his unit from being routed or even annihilated. You couldn't threaten a city of millions with a rump brigade unless they let you.
He was hanging his bare ass out here for God and everybody to see, so he had quietly begun a number of contingencies, especially after receiving a call from an old friend of his who was obviously feeling him out. He had mentioned things about a possible change in leadership at the highest levels.
This was insane. Not only had President Kress been the President for decades, but he was only a Colonel-plotting military coups was the privilege of General Officers, not him! He had the feeling that he might be screwed and hung out to dry, regardless. The politicals hated those who tried to be apolitical even more than their enemies, after all.
"You're curious as to why I assisted our little friends," he said amusedly. He sighed and asked, "Say, Emily, have you ever felt like that you're being screwed over?"
"Working for you... on a daily basis," she said cheerfully, and he laughed. He considered keeping things from her, but it would be counterproductive. She was acting as his S-2, his staff intel officer, so keeping things from her would be hard, anyway. Plus, he trusted her.
After explaining things, Emily Giffords sighed and pushed herself back into the chair, "So, we need to flesh out an option BOHICA, then?"
He snorted at that and nodded. He was calling the contingencies collectively "Plan Zulu," but that worked, too. He opened up files and forwarded surveillance images of people entering the Siren's Call Amusements building. He highlighted one of them, a still image of a woman in profile taken from an aerial asset at high zoom and raised his eyebrows at the Major.
"Their cyberdoctor. We paid special attention to her. Taylor Hebert, a surgical resident at the Night City Health Science Centre. We suspect she's just moonlighting, though. Someone suggested that we make an anonymous complaint to the licensure body since what she is doing is technically illegal, but we've made no move on that yet," she said, tilting her head to the side.
"Ah... I don't think you had clearance for her full dossier-how stupid of the brass to compartmentalise out our intel officer, but not surprising. Here, let me send it to you," he said and forwarded a second file to her.
"A Militech brat, daughter of... hmm..." she said and then raised her eyebrows, "Is this confirmed? This changes our entire outlook on this gang of Borgs. They're obviously the catspaw of these oligarchs, with little Miss Princess overseeing the family investment. But why? What's so important about Pacifica?"
He shrugged, "That, I don't know. But she is inside the building right now . I don't think those two death squads could have destroyed their HQ, but she might have been killed in the crossfire. Maybe not, but I'm banking future favours here. Also, if we end up having to engage option BOHICA... they'll be a buffer to Night City proper."
