"Two more turns, and they'll know our probable path. Get ready, equipment cross-check, da?" said Ruslan as he continued driving the speed limit strictly. All of us, even Kiwi, had more than mere pistols on this op. I had the Kang Tao submachine gun that I often used, and Kiwi had an old but serviceable looking Arasaka Nowaki, while Jean and Rus had two relatively new-looking Ajaxes, which were a fine, simple and reliable Militech product.
I checked both mine and Ruslan's weapons and spare mags, as well as the few rocket-propelled grenade reloads we had for Ruslan's projectile-launch system. I made sure to put those by him in easy reach and got a thumbs up and a grin from the man, with him grabbing the two reloads we had and stuffing them into his pockets, one on either side. Perhaps we should have bought more of those.
Shortly after Ruslan made the second turn Kiwi piped up again, "New contacts behind us. Four more SUVs. They're not bothering to hide, anymore. I think they must have been paralleling our route on a side street." I nodded while I fidgeted and tried to ignore the roiling psychosomatic feeling in my stomach. Although I had been in what would be described by anybody, rightfully, as combat, I was still scared every time it happened.
Another pause, then a hurried, "Four more SUVs coming from the other direction at our far cameras; it looks like they're setting up a roadblock right next to the abandoned building that bravo team is in." She said that last part excitedly.
That... was really good. If the Claws were smart, they would hide right now until they got set up and then attack together with Kiwi's autocannon. To set up a reasonable roadblock across the street that we were travelling, this second team would have to set themselves up to take enfilading fire from the Claws across the street in the building and from elevation to boot.
That was what we were hoping to happen, but there was no telling what might have been. Their entire snatch-or-kill team, whatever their motives were, could have swarmed the van instead, but military men were fundamentally addicted to clever plans, I thought.
I certainly wasn't really one to throw stones in this regard as this entire scheme was a series of clever plans, but when you were on the attack instead of the defence, there was something to be said for a sudden, simple attack with overwhelming force. At least, I thought so, in my lay person's opinion.
It was simple escalation, and as simple as it sounded I felt it was a winning strategy. If the enemy was prepared to deal with small arms, then you brought explosives and a surplus Soviet cannon. It was a shame this second team also darted in from a parallel track and missed the explosives that they had planted on the far side of the ambush site, but you couldn't have everything.
"Kiwi, I think you and the Tyger Claws should attack as soon as you can. That will undoubtedly cause the guys behind us to flip out and start chasing us right into our potholes," I said, glancing at Ruslan as he really did know more about this than I did, "What do you think?"
He grinned, "You read my mind? I hope not because I don't think you'd approve of the things in there. We don't want to wait until we get to the ambush on the off chance they just want to murder us all; this van isn't bulletproof."
I scowled at the implied perversion. Suddenly, even about two kilometres away, we started hearing a cacophony of automatic weapons fire. Then without further preamble, an even louder but much briefer "brrt" sound of the autocannon firing. The six-barrel beast had such an insane rate of fire, at over eight thousand rounds per minute, that Kiwi had to line up shots for a tenth of a second burst; otherwise, she'd burn through the ammo immediately.
I didn't even need Kiwi to tell us that the five vehicles behind us started accelerating because they also started shooting at us. Small, short aimed bursts from the lead vehicle, and I thought they were aiming at our tires, but not only did Ruslan start swerving erratically, but we had already replaced the tires with run-flats the same day he stole the van. Unless they got totally shredded, we'd still keep trucking along.
They'd notice that soon and try something else. There was no way they'd want us to get within range to be supported by that heavy weapons emplacement. "Approaching the first set of potholes," Kiwi said. "The gonks at the ambush site are basically annihilated, some fled on foot the north into downtown, and the Claws didn't pursue. That cannon... well... glory to socialist science, is I'll say."
Ruslan started cackling, and started singing off-key in another language, " Парты/ слава! Слава Радз/ме! Слава табе, Беларуск/ народ!" My auto-translate system hiccuped, saying I didn't have the Belarusian language pack installed, but it gave its best shot at translating it due to its similarities with other Slavic languages. Something about glory to the Party and the Motherland. I didn't even know they had a different language. To be perfectly honest, before I met Ruslan, I didn't even know that country existed. I snorted, and then I felt the van max out at about a hundred and twenty; it must have a fucking regulator on it or something because I was sure the motor had more oomph than this.
The vehicle shuddered as one of the dark SUVs collided with us from behind, ramming into us when they tried to perform a PIT manoeuvre to spin us out, getting denied by Ruslan, swerving to keep them from being able to get to the side of us. However, a second vehicle suddenly appeared right next to us, on the driver's side, slamming into us menacingly as men inside the vehicle made gestures demanding us to pull over.
"Pothole in 5," Kiwi said, and at the same time, Ruslan rolled down the driver's side window and made a rude gesture at them, following it by pointing his arm at their passenger window. The projectile launch system deployed smoothly; I had been seeing to his maintenance after all, and a small rocket-propelled grenade fired off. It detonated on the obviously ballistic-resistant transparent polymers of the windshield. But while it might have been bulletproof, it wasn't shaped charge proof and I briefly saw the carnage the weapon had done to the interior of the vehicle before the truck spun out on fire.
Near on simultaneously, we passed over the first pothole, and immediately Kiwi set off the explosion as the SUV trailing us passed it. The explosion was... a bit much. Not only did it flip the trailing SUV end over end like this was an action film, but it lifted the tail end of our van, causing me to yell, "Fuuuuuck!" I'm not sure what everyone else said, because I was too busy yelling, "Fuuuuuck!"
The tail end of the vehicle, after what seemed like an eternity, slammed back into the ground hard enough that I was worried the axle would fall off. Kiwi said, "Fuck, we missed the second pothole just now. The third is coming up."
Maybe we shouldn't have put them so close together. To be honest, we had actually made most of the potholes instead of finding existing ones and filling them. Ruslan fired another RPG from his hand, like a video game character, but this time missed as the third SUV swerved at just the right time. However, it swerved right into the third pothole, and Kiwi promptly blew it. The vehicle only took half the explosion this time, from the side and spun out and collided with a public DataTerm on the side of the street.
I blinked, as the DataTerm didn't look that damaged. Those things really were indestructible.
"That was the last one-fuuck!" yelled Kiwi as one of the last two SUVs managed to get a PIT manoeuvre off on us, spinning us two hundred and seventy degrees, followed by the last vehicle blocking us in. Ruslan didn't waste any time thinking or prevaricating; he just yelled, "Out, now!"
All four of us jumped out of the vehicle with our weapons, followed by the same by the occupants of the two SUVs. Instead of jumping out of my door, which would have exposed me to fire from their entire team, I unbuckled and leapt out of the driver's side, leaping and rolling while activating my stealth system.
Perhaps we had just infuriated them, or maybe Biotechnica was trying to cut its losses or maybe even they always intended to murder us all, but in either case, each SUV had about five men in it, and they all disembarked from their vehicles, automatic weapons firing. They were moving with a purpose and firing tactically, with several men taking turns to place continuous fire on our position to keep our heads down while the rest of them instantly split into two groups and started moving to either side of us.
About as soon as I had calculated a plan, I looked up to see a grenade sailing in a lazy arc over the roof of the van we were crouched behind. I moved at my max speed and darted up and grabbed it out of the air, and immediately threw it to the side. I was hoping to throw it at the approaching enemy, but when I grabbed it I felt that would be pushing it a little so I basically just deflected it off to the side, causing it to detonate about fifteen metres away from us, and I winced as I felt a piece of shrapnel hit and bounce off my ballistically resistant derriere. It might not be the best time to think about this, but this dress is ruined.
We should have had a better plan for what we would do after leaving the vehicle, as these guys we were facing were professionals. Even mostly invisible, it didn't seem like a great idea to stick my head out, but staying still was certain death. Finally, Kiwi said over our tacnet, "Short circ incoming in three."
Ooh, that was good. Kiwi had a very expensive cyberdeck, and one of the optimisations on it assisted her in using certain quickhacks more easily on multiple enemies. Short circuit was one of these, and while it wasn't a fatal attack, it was quite painful, and that was exactly what we needed right now. It was hard to riddle us all with bullets when some of your cybernetics were mild to moderately electrocuting you.
Ruslan and Jean glanced at me from the other side of the van, and Rus gave a thumbs up. Wait, why were both of them over there? I was alone against the other half of these guys. I didn't think I was more badassed than both Rus and Jean, not by any measure.
A loud zzzt noise and groans of pain, and most importantly, the momentary lack of gunfire, made me discard that thought, and I could see Ruslan as he activated his Sandevistan and started moving even a little quicker than I did. I darted out the other side, the barrel of my weapon rising up. I fired immediately, striking the first man, who was hunched over in pain. The four guys on this side were all stacked up, tactically approaching, so I just held the trigger down and sprayed the entire magazine in their general direction, using my enhanced strength to hold the muzzle rise down.
When the weapon clicked empty, to maximise the useful time of their incapacitation, I just dropped the weapon and pulled out my pistol, putting two rounds into the one man that was still standing. Rushing past them, I moved laterally and put a fair bit of distance between me and the edge of the van before I rounded the corner, seeing one of the two guys that had been keeping us suppressed recovered and aiming a light machine gun down at where I would otherwise have popped my head out of.
I aimed a careful shot and hit him in the centre mass, causing him to fall and me to miss my follow-on shots, which turned out to be a good thing as I immediately got an alert in my head of a Trauma Team Gold member in my vicinity that required aid, and to assist him if it was possible. Then a second burst of fire from Ruslan and Jean taking the other guy, which produced a similar alert on him.
Fuck. I sent over my tacnet, "Cease fire! Cease fire! These two guys are Trauma Team subscribers, don't fucking kill the other guy if you haven't already." Were these two the only Trauma clients? We had exploded a few cars already. Kiwi came over the radio as if reading my mind, "Yeah, Trauma collected two guys from up ahead, too; the Claws and my turret stopped shooting."
Fuck! Who knows when they'd arrive? I glanced up and moved into high gear. In one running jump, I leapt over the SUV they were using as cover, and as I landed, I grabbed the still-conscious one's head and thumped it firmly into the ground, knocking him out.
Looking at the two men and their injuries, I frowned and grabbed the more injured of the two in my arms in a princess carry and started flat running back the way we came on the road, not stopping until I got a good fifty metres away before I sat him down. I had to get these two fucks away because although we didn't have a policy of always shooting when we got on scene, this would already be labelled a high-threat situation given the earlier calls, and there was no telling what the teams on duty would do. If I moved them clearly away from us, they likely wouldn't hose us down with the miniguns on general principle.
I repeat the process with the second guy, setting him right next to the first, who looks like he might code soon if Trauma doesn't get here in the next couple of minutes. I manage to make it halfway back to our van, which Ruslan is trying to extricate from its predicament before the first AV-4 shows up. I yell, "Drop your weapons and put your hands up! They don't give a shit about our fight; they just want their patients."
It was Delta's AV that was responding, and if they fucking flatlined my friends, much less me, I was going to be so very pissed. Thankfully, they didn't hose us down on approach but merely landed right next to the dying guy and hopped out. They didn't work on him much here, just grabbed him, which was an indication that they thought there was a serious and continuing hazard to remain in this area. Then I watched them pause for a couple of seconds, talking with each other, even seeing the led Med Techie shrug, and they grabbed the other guy as well. Ballsy. That was something I would have tried to do, but if their first patient died because they tried to take two home with them, its going to be their asses.
We watch the Trauma AV-4 fly away, and Kiwi says, "Phew. Those guys are kind of scary, you know."
"Let's get the fuck out of here. Hopefully, they didn't fucking shoot the bag of cash to pieces," Ruslan groused, which caused me to wince. They had put a lot of rounds into the sides of that van. It was a wonder it was still operable. Finally, he jumped in the back of the van and yelled, "Kiwi, you drive."
The van was a lot worse for wear, but it probably wouldn't get that much attention, as I had seen a lot of vehicles in a lot worse shape driving the streets day after day. Although she looked like Swiss cheese, she wasn't even in the top five most shot-up vehicles I had seen casually be driven like nothing was wrong. I hopped into the passenger seat after recovering my SMG and carefully buckled my seatbelt again before I glanced in the back as we backed up and navigated around the SUVs and dead or incapacitated bodies. I felt kind of bad for having to shoot these guys. They weren't Scavs; they were just doing their job, no different from what I did every day. Still, I had a smouldering and growing hate for Biotechnica-one of the good ones my foot.
