Was there an HMG? Well, I didn't really want one of those. I was already turning into a trope without becoming a literal gun bunny. Besides, if a weapon was too large, it would stick out obviously from my stealth field. I nodded at him and felt that their chances were pretty good. I wasn't going to remain to guard them, though. I had done my good deed, stupidly, but I functioned mainly as an ambush predator. I couldn't function as well if the bad guys knew to expect me somewhere, "Good luck then."
With that, I drove out of the compound and directly towards my rifle that I had left behind. I almost ran over it but got out quickly and placed it in the passenger seat. Then I drove to where my car was parked and emptied it of anything that could identify me. Frowning, I wondered if I should drive it further away. Theoretically, I could be identified by the registration and plate number. Nodding, I drove my Colby a good four more kilometres away from the Wraith compound, hiding it in an even better spot before running back to my new, fancier Quadra.
As I got behind the wheel of the Quadra and drove to the nearest road, I saw a crappily painted Colby and Galena driving as a convoy straight to the east. That made me smile. When I got back home, though, I was planning on going over the numerous ways I fucked up. I wanted to live a long life in this world, after all.
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I knew you were into that weird shit!
The drive back to the city in the Type-66 was very interesting and, dare I say it, fun. The inside of the vehicle looked like an airplane's cockpit or spacecraft, and I almost had to get the Nomad boy's assistance in just starting the engine until I realised there was an actual checklist printed out and placarded onto the middle console, apparently for forgetful Wraiths. It was a multi-step process that included starting the fuel boost pumps first with a little old-fashioned switch before starting the engine.
The CrystalDome system was pretty amazing too, but on the drive over, I found out that the engine had been replaced by an even beefier modified motor that had a max power of over nine hundred horsepower. I would be lucky if I got a hundred kilometres for every twenty-five litres of CHOO2. This was going to be expensive to fill up at the pump, but the speed was amazing, even on the dirt roads of the Badlands.
The NCPD forced me to get a temporary registration before letting me back into the city but didn't hassle me other than that, which I found surprising. However, the law with regard to Nomads was not very good from the perspective of the Nomads. Everything they had was presumed to be stolen goods. And since there was usually no way to know who it precisely belonged to originally, it was perfectly legal to keep it yourself.
I didn't think that sounded in keeping with their civil rights, but it worked for me in this instance, and it also explained why nomad families reportedly travelled in incredibly well-armed convoys and packs, even law-abiding ones like the three I had saved at the compound. They were basically outlaws, but in the old feudal sense of the word, namely, they were outside the protection of the law, at least here in Night City.
"Hmm... looks like just over twenty-nine hundred kilos. We'll call it twenty-five, though, considering fuel and cargo weight. That's good enough for government work," the bored cop said to me, tapping away on a tablet absently. Apparently, my car was considered customised enough that it needed to be weighed. I was quite thankful that they didn't insist I unload all of my loot from the vehicle as they weighed it, especially since some of that loot was severed heads and limbs of the Wraiths. Although, they might have already detected them when they scanned the car for "security threats" and just not commented on it.
Twenty-nine hundred kilograms on a two-seat car was immensely heavy, and I started to believe that the CrystalDome system they installed really was using armoured plates instead of just thin steel. The idea of "bulletproof" was really more of an ideal or something to aspire to rather than a guarantee, but I would say without reservation that this massive beast was, at the very least, impact resistant. I think people would need to bring out anti-material weapons to stop it head-on, and perhaps that was worth the increased fuel consumption.
I thanked the copper before clearing customs and getting back on the road. Customs was set a few kilometres away from the actual city centre, and it seemed like every three or four years, they pushed it further towards the Badlands whenever Biotechnica built more farms in the Flats, and each time they did so, the NUSA complained heartily and made threats.
The very fact that Night City called the entry a customs checkpoint infuriated the NUSA government, which considered Night City nothing more than a semi-autonomous zone in its own country. Honestly, I was sure that was why they called it that.
Even now, this part of the border was more of a temporary construction featuring a lot of semi-mobile cement blocks, chainlink fencing, sensors and automated weapons than an actual wall built into the ground. It'd stop civilian vehicles like mine for sure, but not an Armoured Battalion, so I thought Night City needlessly taunting the NUSA government was kind of stupid if they didn't have any way to stop the former from rolling across like Night City was Poland.
My lead foot was kind of coming back to bite me in the ass, as when I stepped onto the accelerator when I got onto the highway, I nearly lost control and almost collided with a poor bastard in a MaiMai who looked on at the armoured bulk of my "sports car" coming to crush him like he was a Nicola can in abject terror. As I passed him, the terror shifted to outrage, and he laid on his dinky little horn at me, but his engine could barely keep him at the minimum of seventy-five kilometres an hour that you needed to maintain to stay on the highway, much less catch up with me.
It was kind of nice; a lot of cars just changed lanes when they saw me approach from their rear to let me pass. It kind of felt like what I imagined having one of those giant pit bull dogs would be like if you ever walked it on a leash. Even the Merchants would have given me a wide berth if I did that back in the Bay.
Pulling into my Megabuilding's parking garage, I parked in my space. It took three trips for me to bring everything back with me to my apartment. I needed to visit the building's management office, but they wouldn't be open for another six hours, so instead, I doffed everything I was wearing, carefully setting my form-fitting suit aside.
Looking in the mirror, I had three good-sized welts on my chest. It looked like the rounds penetrated my outer vest but not the armoured bodysuit. That was pretty close, then, as the outer vest was the most armoured of the two.
I had already dug the rounds out before I ever got back to the city, but thinking about it now, I grabbed the submachine gun that had been used to shoot me and ejected the magazine. There were only a few rounds left, but they were of a steel-core armour-piercing variety. Rather an unusual load-out for a nine-millimetre sub-gun, I thought, but it wasn't like I was a grizzled veteran at this mercenary business.
I was lucky; even AP ammo in nine millimetres wasn't super effective due to the geometry of the projectile. There were other submachine guns, like my Kang Tao, that fired a smaller, faster, pointy spitzer-type projectile that had significantly better armour-piercing capability, to say nothing about carbines or full-sized rifles.
Sighing, I just shook my head and stood under my hot shower for some time, thinking about it while composing a brief message to Wakako telling her the details of the gig, including both the information about the Nomad family as well as my personal intelligence about the contaminants in Laguna Bend.
As for my own personal performance, I wasn't going to beat myself up over it. Perhaps it would have been safer if I didn't involve myself, but honestly, I felt that I had done a good thing.
I didn't know anything about the culture of Nomads, and the three seemed to suggest that those Wraiths might not have killed them, but I was learning there were a lot worse things than death. Besides, I was still convinced they probably would have received the ransom payment and killed them anyway if their family didn't have some way to ensure they didn't do that. A scorpion would always be a scorpion.
After I put on my pyjamas, I sat at my workbench and absently removed cybernetics from the body parts I had brought home with me. I had about three sets of limbs and as many cybernetic eyes of middling to decent quality. It was something I could do on automatic while I mentally reviewed everything I did. Some of the mistakes were obvious, like assuming my Ping would uncover all enemies. But there were a lot of little things I could improve on as well.
Although some might have said my preparations exceeded those that were necessary for a simple observation job, at the same time, they kind of fell short too. If I had several more magazines for the rifle, then I might have been able to stay back and pick off more of the enemies from a range, although perhaps not. Another way to scale chainlink-type fencing would be useful, too.
I could jump a lot higher than one would think just looking at me; my muscle and bone lace had significantly increased the strength of my legs. However, I'd never tried the complicated acrobatics necessary to jump, climb up half a fence and then leap in an arc over the barbed wire on top.
I didn't even know how I would practice that. How did corporate ninjas get the uncanny agility and grace that I saw on fictional TV shows? It couldn't all be made up. Maybe they took gymnastics classes? However, there were other options. There was an extremely tear-resistant lightweight fabric based on monolayer graphene that I could buy. They were used as tarps in applications where weight was a consideration, like aviation and in cargo spacecraft, and while a little bit pricey, I could keep one in my car. They could then easily be tossed over barbed wire to make it simple to climb over safely.
Past that, the only problem I could see was that I was alone for what should have been a team mission, but there was not a lot I could do on that front.
I could make all the plans in the world, and while it was great to have some backup, things could go wrong even on routine jobs. Things could go wildly wrong just driving to work or going out to the store in this city! The only thing I could do was stop accepting to do any solo jobs as it was possible any of them could turn into a cockup, but that wasn't something I was willing to do.
Using the multiple tools on the ripperdoc's glove, I finished extracting the last cybernetic eye out of the previous owner's skull, humming softly as I did so. Placing it into a small cryogenic storage cylinder along with the other of the pair, I loaded them into the stock-keeping system. After that, it was just fifteen minutes of cleanup, disposing of all of the "medical waste" in speciality red biohazard bags, cleaning up my work area with chemicals, and tossing the disposable nitrile gloves in with the stack of heads.
Tying the bags closed, I set them aside to dispose of later this morning. Then, instead of getting into bed, I just sat in my comfortable chair and put the sleep inducer on my head, rolling the dial all the way to a full three-hour cycle and pressing the activation key.
I added a three-second delay to the device so that I could place my hands in my lap before I-
"You found it?" asked the building manager, unbelievingly, looking at the obvious painted-over Nomad gang markings that you could still somewhat see on his garage security system.
I nodded, "Yes, I found it." I then smiled and continued, "I'll need to rent a second parking space for at least a few months. I may keep both vehicles, but I might get rid of one of them." There were a lot of reasons to get rid of the Type-66. Truly, filling up the tank of CHOO2 once was already quite painful. It was no wonder the Wraiths were pirates; you'd need to steal an oil tanker on the high seas to not be bothered by the fuel prices when driving it. The aftermarket engine was an even worse fuel hog than the normal Quadra. However, I really liked it, so perhaps I would just keep both vehicles.
Although, I'd check to see if Gloria wanted to buy my old car today. She was rolling around in a Galena that looked as old as I did.
The Japanese man stared at me for a few more seconds while I continued to smile in a friendly way. Finally, he just sighed and shrugged, "Alright. A second parking spot will be fifty eurodollars a month." That was twice as much as the first one, but I supposed that made sense as few people actually had two cars, so it was a luxury price point. There weren't empty parking spaces next to my current one either, so I elected to select two new places so that they could be right next to each other, even if they were slightly farther from the door.
As I left the office and started to head back upstairs, I got a call from someone I hadn't spoken to in a few weeks. I picked up and said, "Hello?"
The cheery voice of the young doll greeted me, "Hello, Taylor! How are you doing?"
"Uhh... I'm good! Is something the matter?" I asked her, thinking that perhaps someone needed urgent medical care; however, I was wrong.
She moued prettily, with a towel wrapped around her head. It looked like she had just gotten out of the shower. Then she shook her head, "No! I just wanted to talk and maybe invite you to get some breakfast. It's been a while since we've hung out, and it's important to keep up with friendships. Otherwise, people drift apart!"
Wait, were we friends? I thought about it for a while. Although I'd been here for almost two years now, I was still defaulting to the idea that I didn't have any friends. I distrusted people who were too friendly to me, as it had been a common practice for Emma to get someone to pretend to be my friend for a week or so and then later say or do something horrible to me. Still, at least I realised how silly that was.
Still, it was a difficult thing to be so utterly betrayed by your best friend. Especially at the age it happened to me. It might not have been as bad if I was a boy, as I felt that a best friend-style relationship with young boys was shallower than it was with young girls.
It could be that that was just my impression from looking at boys' friendships from the outside, but it was my opinion that a real "best friend forever" relationship between two young girls was as close as being just shy of romance. You shared everything together, and there were things I had told Emma that I had not even told my parents, and she used all of it to utterly destroy me.
