I wasn't sure I wanted the answer to the question, but I still asked Evelyn, "What is a 'dommy mommy boss fantasy', and why would I have awoken it in one of your clients while waiting for the hostess?"
That caused all four of them to crack up briefly.
Despite all of that, the breakfast was very fun. I had strawberry and cream pancakes, eggs and bacon. It was the best breakfast I had in months and was only about twice the price of my normal breakfast. Perhaps I would go here again.
It wasn't as awkward as I thought it would be with Anders there, despite him being an Adonis in human form. It was actually... fun to be around people like that. It was similar to the time I spent with Kiwi, Ruslan and Jean, even if we usually only hung out before or after a gig.
I declined a ride back to the Megabuilding, as I wanted to do a little shopping in the downtown area and figured I'd take a taxi back or maybe just get on the NCART.
As I was window shopping aimlessly at a large electronics store, I got a call from Wakako. I stepped into a more private and less popular area of the store before I answered, "Hello, Mrs Okada."
"Taylor, I received your report about the gig, and I have some questions. Firstly, did these guys owe you money? Or perhaps seduce your sister and then not call her afterwards? You went scorched earth! From my and the client's perspective, that is great and all — you're getting a double bonus, but it seemed a little out of character," she said, using a very amused tone but also a curious one.
I see how it was. It was making fun of Taylor day. That's fine, that's fine. I'll remember this, though. I sniffed delicately and offered a haughty tone, "I thought they were crucifying two people, including a boy that was maybe five years younger than me, and I was in a position to stop them while still accomplishing the mission objectives."
"Mmhmm," replied Wakako, "You're not trying to be a hero, are you?"
I'd like to be, but I wasn't stupid, so I told her honestly, "I don't think there are any heroes on this whole planet, much less me. Still, fuck those guys."
She nodded, "Indeed. I appreciate the tip about NC Dams, too. I had some similar information, so this is a good confirmation. In exchange, I have some advice that you asked for: I wouldn't recommend trying to short their company unless you have at least a million in liquidity and are willing to risk it. Anything less than that, and I think they'll stay afloat long enough to cause you to lose money overall. It is likely that they'll hang on for at least another six months. It's possible you could make some eddies if you try it five months from now, assuming I'm right. Just my opinion, though, and I am not your investment analyst."
"No, you're much better than that," I told her honestly, but I was curious, "Why are the powers that be working to keep the stock price up?"
She got a shrewd look on her face, "I can't say exactly, but if I had to guess, I would, perhaps, say that the market makers and initial investors are keeping the price up until such a point that they also have secured themselves a net negative position on the company so that they can minimise the amount of money they lose. This might take some time if they want to do so without drawing any attention."
Something told me that was a very good guess. Something also told me that I would likely need to look under my car for a long time if I was stupid enough to try to call Network News 23 and give them a tip about this company. So, I would keep my mouth shut.
"Lastly, the drones. Client is willing to buy them back from you at a thousand eddies a pop. Interested?" she asked.
I hadn't bothered doing much research about this model of drone, so I asked, "Is that a good price?"
She shrugged, "Fair, I'd say. It isn't a good price if you have a use for drones like this, though, but it is a fair price for liquidating them when you didn't expect to get them in the first place. You can buy them used for about four grand per unit. One thousand is a fall off the truck price. He's trying to avoid having to pay more to replace them."
That was fair, I suppose, especially since that was basically how I acquired them if you included the fact that I murdered everyone on the truck and then set it on fire afterwards.
I couldn't see any use for medium-sized CHOO2-powered aerial cargo drones. Especially ones that had to have been hacked somehow to down them, so I nodded, "Yeah, that's fine. I'll have them couriered over to your office today or tomorrow morning at the earliest." I might even deliver them myself. RCS would charge almost a hundred bucks for the job, and Wakako didn't live so far away from my place. A hundred eddies was a hundred eddies, after all.
"Excellent, Taylor. It's always good to do business with a pro. As far as the other matter, I have secured a number of testers, and you should expect some good news in just a few days, a week at the most," she said brightly.
A pro? I didn't feel like a pro. Still, I took the compliment with good grace. Before she disconnected, I asked her, "Do you have any contacts for a body and paint shop? I want a complete re-spray done on my new car."
Her eyebrow rose perceptibly, and she nodded, "I'm not surprised. And yes, I'll send you the deets." With that, she disconnected. Wakako was never one for much small talk, after all.
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I Want Peking Duck!
It was a rainy night in the big city, the rain falling down in sheets onto my form-fitting hydrophobic bodysleeve. Over a secure net connection, I told my partner in crime, "Don't worry, the security here is a joke. Only motion detectors and maybe a laser grid. I'll be in and out."
Her face popped up on the corner of the vision, the attractive female netrunner smiling sultrily, "Well, get to it then, toots. We have to have the data tap in place before the target comes home in the morning." The target was the leader of an international terrorist organisation called the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, and we were being paid to secure proof that this terrorist group was colluding with a local corporation.
Eyes rolling, I triggered my stealth systems and vanished from sight, running gracefully through the open area right before the tall glass of the Corporate tower. Leaping off the ground and spinning through the air, I hit the side of the building, using suction cups attached to my hands and feet to quickly scale several floors. Once I got to the correct floor, I hung precariously from the glass as I took a small object from my belt and attached it to one of the suction cups. The device featured a telescoping attachment which I pulled out to its full length, the whole construction looking like the spoke from a bicycle, absent the wheel.
Pressing a button on the device caused a visible bright red laser to strike the glass face with a hiss as I rotated the device in a full three hundred and sixty degrees around the suction cup, slicing out a large circle of glass. After the glass section was free, I deactivated the device and replaced it on my belt, then lifted the entire section of glass out of the hole before leaping through it, carefully bringing the section of glass inside the building with me and setting it aside. I had to align the circle of glass carefully while I was in mid-air so that it would fit through the hole, but it was not at all difficult.
"I'm in," I tell her across our tacnet theatrically.
Her face nods in the corner of my screen, "Okay, take the third left, right, left, left; then the next right will be the fibre optic junction."
I dart down through the corridors as directed until I arrive at a nondescript door. I say, obviously, "It doesn't look like much."
"Maybe not, but all data traffic in and out of their data fortress goes through this junction. The code should be 8-2-4-5-8-9-9-9," my netrunner said, which caused me to nod and quickly enter the code on the pin pad before opening the door.
The next room was large and filled with humming computers and the noise of heavy-duty HVAC cooling systems. The entryway was guarded by several dozen lasers that appeared to move up and down and left to right, changing angles and position seemingly randomly. Deactivating my stealth system as I felt I would need to see my body for this, I then took a few moments to limber up. I used the grace of a ballerina to bend in and out of the lasers, a leap here, bending entirely backwards there and missing each laser beam by centimetres. I almost made it through, but my prodigiously sized breasts managed to occlude the last beam, and instantly an audible klaxon started blaring.
"Shit! You've done it now," my partner said.
I sighed, shaking my head and pulling out my pistol in one hand and monowire in the other, "Oh boy, here I go killin' again...." I was going to need a cool, refreshing Nicola Classic after this-
I suddenly found myself back in the AV-4's cabin listening to an altogether different-sounding klaxon. "PLATINUM. SCRAMBLE. SCRAMBLE. SCRAMBLE."
I sighed and verified that the braindance had stopped so that I could resume where I had left off. This was episode six, and I had been consuming this series religiously since I discovered it a few months ago. They came out with one episode a month, and although it was cheesy in the extreme in some respects, and I usually had to fast forward through at least one sex scene, usually of the lesbian persuasion, per episode, it was still very entertaining.
I didn't know why I liked it. Half the time, the protagonist got caught in the act and had to use her feminine wiles or sheer luck to get out of the situations she got herself in. The rest of the time, she used implausible combat abilities, which I found very amusing. In the last episode, she diced an aircar into pieces with her monowire while she was inside it several hundred metres in the air . It would be really nice if that were possible, and it was cinematic as hell to have her barely manage to save herself in the free-fall afterwards, but it was implausible. But it was that very implausibility that made it so hilarious.
Rather than the usual of throwing us off our perch, the aircraft went to maximum power and started a high-speed high-rate climb out to the south. That was a sign the patient wasn't in the city.
I pulled up the data on the patient. Not surprisingly, it was a trauma. Surprisingly, it was on the edge of the Badlands, as I was guessing. We didn't often pick up Platinum clients out there — they were rich enough not to need to leave our normal service volume. In this case, though, the client was a mid-level Biotechnica executive. He was high enough up the ladder that he had a Platinum membership but low enough that he still had to go to dangerous places; in this case, he was near the Biotechnica Flats but technically outside the border of the city. They were probably looking at areas of expansion or making examples of poorly performing employees or some other nonsense.
I glanced at the Senior I was working with today, and he was already frowning. The beacon was still transmitting, but the bio-monitor was not providing any updates after the initial ping for widespread penetrating or kinetic trauma, which wasn't a good sign. I wasn't working with Dr Anno today and probably wouldn't for a few months. Although I did work his normal schedule, he was working alongside a new hire as he did with me in the past.
Mercy came on our net, "We're expecting heavy combat on this run, so we're probably going to stay back and spray everything that moves with the Gatlings before setting down. Pilots think it is Nomads, but we can already see some burning vehicles and heavy machine-gun fire from here; twenty-five klicks out on the infrared, and that is bullshit."
Mr Mercy, as the Senior Security Specialist, was in command theoretically until we made patient contact; although the pilot was in command of the aircraft, he basically did and went where Mr Mercy told him to go, which was why the Senior Security Specialist was often tied with the Senior Med Techie as the highest paid employee on the AV, and the only way you could be qualified for that job was if you had significant leadership experience in actual military forces, with a focus on small unit tactics. For example, Mr Mercy was a former Captain in the NUSA Special Forces, as Alt-Danny himself had been.
I switched to the stream of the long-range zoom FLIR pod and frowned as I, sure enough, saw heavy machine guns and light cannon fire back and forth between vehicles, some of which were fleeing while others were pursuing. Triggering the pilot's net, I could hear their discussion.
"Doesn't look like Nomads to me, Bill," said the co-pilot and gunner wryly.
The pilot sighed, "Yeah, yeah, don't bust my balls. Alright, fence in, gadget on."
The co-pilot shifted to an all-business tone, "Targetting radar online, we have confirmed Biotechnica IFF. New picture, range one niner, two groups azimuth two-zero-fife, track south southeast, south group azimuth two one niner, track southwest. Gadget is calling the first group three ATOMs, not BMPs, as I thought, and the second group a mix of SUVs and technicals, radiating Biotechnica IFF. Groups will merge soon."
"Label first group hostile, second group friendly, set gates, max power," the pilot said a lot more calmly than I was feeling. Then he said formally, "You are cleared hot on the IFVs."
One would think that as a passenger in the back of the AV, I would have felt it when they launched actual missiles, but the missiles we used were pretty small. I felt it much more when the pilot went full throttle and started diving, with the airframe shaking and all of the turbines screaming loudly.
The AGM Kite was not technically an anti-tank missile, although it could get mission kills sometimes from what I read online, but it was designed to wreck SPAGs and other small, lightly armoured targets, as well as headquarters elements. The reason Trauma Team used it, other than the fact that it was relatively cheap, was that it had excellent guidance and minimal collateral damage. You could stand just a few metres away from one if it hit a vehicle, and the Kite's explosion wouldn't injure you — although secondary explosions might.
At the same time, I saw three rockets separate from our aircraft on the infrared feed. I heard the co-pilot say dispassionately, "Rifle, ATOM times three. Spinning up the Gancz now, we can skip the high-speed pass with the gun, we probably can't defeat the armour with it, but let's swing around in front in case they have any infantry, we can hose them down, or they can cook; their choice. Range now zero niner, Kite terminal guidance starts in one zero seconds."
