2078: Highriders - Chapter 12

The tequila was… different.

Not bad, but it somehow slid down the pipe differently. It had all the right notes of flavor, but there was an extra tangy aftertaste.

Fuck it, he thought.

He downed the whole lot in one gulp, put the glass down and slid it forward. “Drink slinger, another.”

The skinny highrider behind the bar, wearing an apron over a scruffy vac suit adorned with workgroup holo patches, gave Johnny a raised eyebrow before getting another fresh glass and began the process of making another Tequila Old Fashioned.

“Less syrup, the last one was too sweet.”

The bartender paused briefly, before nodding, only throwing in a quarter ounce.

Thirty seconds of stirring later, the drink was strained in a rocks glass over a large ice cube.

The completed cocktail was pushed forward and Johnny carefully took a sip.

Much better.

While he was mostly used to this ‘new’ body by now, there were still little things that carried over from when V had been solely in the driver’s seat. The taste buds would especially throw the odd surprise. In his old body, he would’ve preferred a sweeter Old Fashioned, the sensation from the drink on the tongue was different now. This was just one example of a dozen odd discoveries he had made since he had made the transition back into meatspace. When he had shared the wheel with V for the body, it had certainly been an experience, adjusting not just to a woman’s body, the hormones, the plumbing differences, learning an entirely different way to walk, move and the feedback of having V’s rather impressive rack reacting to those movements.

Now it was all his rack, his toned ass and hadn’t that been a doozy to sort out in his head.

He was Johnny fucking Silverhand, man’s man, now… 

Well, at least V had somewhat eased the transition with a custom Mr. Studd that rather impressively replicated what had been between his legs.

No, now he was just Hollow.

To most of the world, a woman, a bad-ass sniping Solo who kept her head down and shot your head off from kilometers away. A mask that slipped slightly whenever he brought a joytoy to bed.

Yet, there were moments where he caught himself almost yearning for the old spotlight. To just let the old ego resurface and give the finger to the world.

Sure go ahead, Johnny. Let the world stomp you flat.

The whole immortality tech business would be bad enough. Even as a former Rockerboy merc turned AI, he could tell shit was gonna fly in the fallout. He imagined trying to tell the world that the first man to truly cross that bridge was someone who’d been a ‘terrorist’. It didn’t matter what the actual truth was, perception was all that mattered.

He took the last sip of the tequila and slammed the glass down with a touch more force than necessary.

It was always the same pattern after a gig and he just couldn’t escape it.

Get the job, do it, come home covered in guts and glory, get paid and then the maudlin would set in, which had to be lubricated with tequila, smoking and sex.

You’d think going to the ‘Net and back would change things, but he was quickly discovering that there were some things that would never change.

He forcefully dragged his thoughts away from that topic and scanned the bar.

It was barely a few hundred meters away from Tycho Heights. A seedy place, clearly run by the Driftkin, with cheap furniture that came out of either a 3D printer or made with the reforged scrap from local industry. The air hung heavy with a potent mix of Nic-sticks of a dozen flavors, since there was no lighting up in the oxygen controlled habitats on Luna. It was like the old vape craze that had crashed and burned even before the Time of the Red, except here it was the only game in town for those with the nicotine addiction.

The old ghost of that addiction was barely a wisp of memory with no bite, thanks to the Cold Turkey that being within V had forced on him. Now he was within her perfect, military grade chromed out body and he’d be damned if he was gonna fuck up these synth-lungs. So he firmly ignored the temptation to actually get a Nic-stick for himself.

The denizens of the bar was a mix of highrider lowlifes, Driftkin mostly, but there were a few other workgroup tattoos and holos sprinkled in, dedicated spacers and some low level corpos.

In one entire length of the room, a group of highriders were playing darts, standing more than double the distance you would on Earth. The walls festooned with active holos showing live zero-g sports, where a loud group of Driftkin were betting on the action.

In this case, Z-G Combat, that reminded Johnny of augmented MMA mixed with acrobatics in tall domes. Some of the moves they pulled could’ve been taken straight from the Bushido movies, but there was no faking or wirework needed here.

Another screen had drone racing, with competing operators jacked into neural interface rigs and racing high performance drones through underground lunar tunnels, lava tubes and even some surface sections.Then of course, low-G soccer, where the challenge was as much to stay on the ground without launching yourself into the air and out of control, whilst retaining possession and scoring goals. The Lunar version of the game was quite spectacular to watch, but there were only enough pro-teams for a single league. It was popular enough back on Earth and beyond to rake in the eddies.

“Another,” he instructed the barkeep.

He was halfway down that drink when his military grade ears and eyes picked out someone approaching his left with purpose.

It could’ve been just another customer taking a seat, but somehow Johnny doubted it, especially when he noticed the finer details in the large mirror behind the bar.

“One glass of your best Lunar Reserve single malt Scotch,” ordered the tall figure.

“Only take that out for special customers, Earther-”

The man with a dark blue corpo suit, fit to perfection, made a negligent gesture as he sat down. The bartender’s left eye glowed slightly as his retinal imager flashed. The corpo making a transaction right there and letting the eddies do the talking instead.

“One scotch coming right up.”

Johnny lazily and very casually looked left, meeting the constantly lit blue optics of the newest customer.

Fuck.

Mr. Blue Eyes.

He’d seen this fucker out of V’s eyes on a few occasions and during his hiatus in cyberspace had come to learn a lot more. He was a pro merc for Night Corp, who was dancing to the tune of the AI playing with the city as its petri dish. Blue Eyes might also be the proxy for that AI.

“Still drinking away your sorrows, Johnny?”

Blue took a sip even as pure shock blasted through every nerve ending in Johnny’s body. It wasn’t that he’d been recognized despite having an entirely different body, face and even skull sponge at this point.

It was the deep tone and timbre of the voice now coming from his interlocutor.

There was only one man who spoke like that.

He’d met him numerous times in the 2010s. They never worked the same gigs, their circles and temperament were too different. The one place they did have in common was the Atlantis and the last gig to attack the old Arasaka Tower with a nuke.

Alt had fixed the scrambled mess that Saburo had made of Johnny’s memories as much as she had been able.

Man, had that been an ego puncturing moment if there ever was one. Actually dying like some chump newbie to Smasher’s cannon within the first few seconds of that gig. Then getting my ass Soulkilled.

The voice he had just heard belonged to the leader of the other strike team. The one who had actually confronted Smasher on the roof of the tower.

Johnny downed the remains of his drink in one gulp. “You’re either the stupidest gonk in the system, using that voice or you’re really him. Should I even be surprised that you’re still around?”

Morgan Blackhand aka Mr Blue Eyes in a proxy body leaned forward, resting his elbows on the bar, casually playing with the glass of Scotch. “Even in our day, Hollow, there were ways to extend life. I have had the means to use them and now it seems I can save a lot of money thanks to the efforts of your partner.”

“Cutting through the bullshit, what do you want, Blue?” 

Blackhand only smirked at Johnny’s derision. “Well, if there’s one thing your time in digital oblivion has cured you of, it’s your recklessness and it’s also seemingly put a professional bone in your body. You can learn it seems.”

Johnny only glared in response at the original legend of Night City, the man who had practically written the book on modern mercenary work. 

“Fine, why else would I be here, but to offer you both a gig.”

Johnny still wasn’t entirely convinced he wasn’t being played by the Tentacle AI. Was this truly Morgan Blackhand? What would that AI have to gain by pretending to be him? He honestly couldn’t think of a single reason beyond gaslighting and fucking with their heads, which was the stock in trade for that AI. “Why come to me? Not exactly the spokesperson for V.”

“I only recently arrived on Luna and V is currently occupied, it’d be very rude to interrupt. You’re here, you know the game and can negotiate somewhat on V’s behalf or at least bring my offer to her when she’s in a state to hear it.”

“Fine, but first, anyone with good enough records can fake that voice. Either Militech or Arasaka  undoubtedly has enough surviving data to make a good facsimile.”

Blue nodded, “Entirely possible, Johnny. However, you must ask yourself whether you’re in any position to really judge. Arasaka did a number on your memories and I’ve since learned you had your noggin straightened out somewhat, but nothing I can say or show you here will truly satisfy and give you certainty. Whether I’m pretending to be Blackhand or not, it’s irrelevant to the matter at hand. You could also say after so long, I’m getting tired of wearing this proxy and in a stupid moment of weakness, let my professionalism slip.”

Johnny scoffed and shook his head, “Now I know you’re full of it, Blackhand pulling out the stick out of his own ass, wouldn’t happen.”

“Choose to believe whatever you want to, Johnny.” Blue pulled out a data shard and put it on the bar. Johnny twitched as he felt a firewall go up around them in cyberspace, including a radiant jammer from Mr. Blue Eyes that would confound anyone trying to use surveillance.  “Details of the gig, but I know you’ll just throw it in the trash if I don’t sell you on it first. You know that just after the war of 2070, a scientific breakthrough was made regarding gravity. Our science could finally begin to alter it in limited ways, change it. The espionage war in the shadows for this technology was brutal, but the end result was that all the major players either got it, or at least gained enough to crash start their own homebrew programs of the technology.

“The problem with the technology is that there are still a lot of kinks and caveats to it. It’s miniaturizable to the extent that we’ve got anti-grav boots with thrusters on them, but the more you want to do, the more your power requirement goes exponentially higher. All the big corps in aerospace have been bashing their heads against the problem with no success. However, there is one person that might have just cracked it.”

Johnny leaned backward and folded his arms, “And let me guess, they’re here on Luna.”

Blue smiled mildly, “You’re correct of course. Her name is Dr. Kaori Matsui, working as lead researcher at a very secret facility right here in Tycho City, for Mitsubushi-Sugo Aerospace.”

“Not secret enough then.”

“Indeed, and that’s the problem. A standing extraction order has been issued by Militech, they want her and her research, by force if necessary.”

“Surely Sugo can protect her.”

“In ordinary circumstances, yes. The problem is that they relied a bit too much on the shield of secrecy. Their level of security here in Tycho is all automated, minimal personnel to create as small of a footprint as possible. Now that it’s breached, they’ll be caught flatfooted with no way to meaningfully resist the extraction.”

“And that’s where V and I come in.”

“Yes, you’ll step in and keep Dr. Matsui safe so she can continue her vital research unimpeded.”

“Timeline.”

“You need to be on overwatch within eight hours. Militech will try subtle first to avoid making waves.”

“Pay?”

“This may be a somewhat long term gig, so it’ll be flexible and accumulating. I’m essentially hiring you as bodyguards until her work is complete. Militech will not be the only ones coming, they’re just the first.”

“This is gonna be expensive, Blue. Hope your pockets are deep.”

“Money in this case, is irrelevant, just so long as it is done. Your job will be made even more difficult in that at least initially, you can’t contact the good doctor. You must be her literal guardian angels.”

“Sugo’s going to eventually get wise.”

“They will, at which point you’ll have no problems from me if you work together openly. They may even hire you as well and you’ll get paid double for the same job. Interested yet, Johnny?”

“You definitely have my attention, Blue.”

“Good. Get it done, Johnny.”

The proxy stood and without further word left the bar.

88888888888888888888888888888888888

“You’re fucking kidding me.”

I stared at him with wide eyes as we both hovered over the virtual mansion in my datafortress.

“Can’t tell you one way or another. It could’ve been Morgan Blackhand, could’ve been a mind game.”

My mind tried to reconcile everything I had ever seen about Mr. Blue Eyes and mesh it with the idea that the person behind those optics was actually the Morgan Blackhand, Night City’s original living legend. The man whose feud with Adam Smasher practically wrote the city’s early history. Who had also built his rep on the fact that he could pull off impossible gigs and even take in his targets alive when every sane merc would run the other way. Another famous characteristic was that he did all this with minimal cyberware enhancement, only enough to get the job done, in stark contrast with Smasher.

“Maybe the proxy is a way to keep himself in the business. He's, what, maybe a decade older than Rogue?”

“Extrapolated date of birth for Morgan Blackhand is 1988,” Butcher shimmered into view beside us.

“Rogue can still kick ass, as you well know,” Johnny shook his head. “Even if Blackhand was now a portly asshole in a trenchcoat, still hanging on, he’s good, V. In a contest, no question, he’d kick both our asses. The proxy just makes it worse, because now he’s got state of the art cyber and bioware, neatly sidestepping the cyberpsychosis risk and if someone with his experience and skill is driving it…”

“Yeah, so let’s not piss off Blackhand and hope he never gets a contract on our heads.”

“Blackhands’ services are currently bought out by Night Corp, which at this point is a de facto arm of the AI you refer to as Tentacle,” Butcher declared factually.

“And you know this, how?”

“I asked Tentacle directly. As it is part of the Coalition, there is no reason to overly prohibit data exchange.”

“And Tentacle won’t at some point decide to send Blackhand our way?”

Butcher openly tilted his head, as if listening. “As you are not working against the Coalition, it calculates no necessity now or in the immediate future to terminate your existence.”

“Good to know,” I said dryly, waving my hand to bring up the data shard that Blue/Blackhand had given us.

A virtu representation appeared of a Japanese woman, 1.69 meters tall, built slenderly and wearing a rather stylish black and gray panelled labsuit that clung nicely to curved hips and a full bosom, featuring the Mitsubishi logo on her left chest in a rather understated fashion. Her short asymmetrical hair featured a neon-green streak, whilst her optics glowed a lurid bright blue. There were clear subdermal implants visible on her hands and forearms, whilst she had the standard neural link firmware visible on her left temple and behind her left ear. 

Blue had even managed to get a fairly complete personnel dossier on her.

Born in Chiba, Japan, Matsui was one of the once in a generation prodigies and specialized in particle physics, earning her PhD at Tokyo University by 22. Recruited directly by Mitsubishi to begin work in 2072 on their gravity research. First working out of their orbital torus station that was at the L5 lagrange point and finally shifted her work to Luna when the research facility under Tycho was fully operational.

Now five years of work later and apparently there had been a major breakthrough in the original limitations that grav tech had encountered. The precise details were obviously not included in her file.

Her psychological indicators were a problem, however.

Her primary trait was an obsessiveness, often working beyond recommended safe limits in her ‘goal to conquer gravity’. Given what I knew about the work week that corpos mandated for their staff and having been part of that rat race, she was going beyond what even they considered reasonable. She was also described as an idealist, someone who wanted to use gravity control technology to make life on Luna safer. To allow highriders to have children without extensive medical intervention or forcing prospective mothers into orbital spin stations for the duration of their pregnancy.

“Yeah, somewhat glad we’re not going up to this one, at first,” Johnny grimaced. “She’d just as likely shoot us before we even got a word in.”

He was referring to another note in her file about a rather healthy paranoia in my own opinion. It was a problem for the Mitsubishi execs, but I didn’t see an issue when you backed up your data off-site and didn’t even tell your bosses where you hid it. She even had a chutzpah to dare them to fire her. She had literally made herself the Golden Goose, which was not a good thing as the upcoming Militech kidnapping attempt made clear.  

So far she had stayed under the radar by cloistering herself in her lab and only leaving for corpo worker housing when she actually wanted to sleep in a proper bed.

She had no run-ins with Tycho PD, nor any highrider workgroups, that this file indicated at least.

“Butcher, got anything in cyberspace on her that’s not in this file?”

“Stand by, yes, it seems that she is not without contacts or external allies. She has engaged the services of Lucy Kushinada to scrub her movements and data as much as possible. It’s likely that she has also assisted in the creation of the research data vaults. It is a logical conclusion therefore that the Highriders are also a primary sponsor of this research.”

“It’s not as if Mitsubishi could build a ‘secret’ lab under this city without their cooperation and labor either,” I nodded in agreement.

A gesture waved away the form of the scientist and brought up the location of the Mitsubishi-Sugo Lunar R&D Division.

It was roughly two hectares of space, excavated twenty meters further below the publicly known lowest level of the city. It featured its own power generation and oxygen crackers from water that it carefully siphoned off the main city supply. The entrance was, in a rather straightforward fashion, in the public Mitsubishi-Sugo building in the east of the city. Where a hidden elevator would take down the scientists into the R&D division.

“All right, we can safely bet that the Militech snatch team will not try anything near there, so they’re going to set up along the route to her apartment.”

I traced out a winding stretch of 160 meters through Tycho’s lower level streets, straight towards the apartment building.

“Grabbing her en route is risky, too many variables, witnesses, cams they don’t have access to without stepping on toes. No, they’ll grab her outside the apartment, likely coming home when she’s tired and less alert.”

Johnny’s tone was flat, clearly thinking of his own experience of watching Alt get ‘snatched’ after getting ambushed outside a club.

“They can’t know exactly when she’ll come back. We have to assume they have the same intel we have. So they’ll be doing a stakeout of the place, putting the pieces in place. Once they have her, the exfil off Luna has to be in place beforehand. They can’t sit on their hands with their package whilst they wait for an OA transport.” I began to grin as a notion occurred to me.

“Got a plan, V?” Johnny smirked knowingly.

“The beginning of one,” I manipulated the holo and dataflows, bringing up the buildings surrounding the corpo apartment. “Now if I were a Militech snatch team, where would I hole up?”

8888888888888888888888888888888888888888

The answer wasn’t easy to get.

Corpo extraction squads were usually recruited from the best that their military had to offer, but they were not THE best, because they also were ultimately expendable and deniable. If things went wrong, in best ass-covering fashion the manager responsible would be ready to cut the cord and have all the evidence on hand framing a rival corp for the mess. If the false flag play was not an option, the corp would also be ready to sanitize the soldiers used - erasing everything that ever showed that Sergeant Spec Ops had ever worked for Militech.

It was also why extraction squads had every motivation to do their utmost to not fuck up and would fight tooth and nail to the death. They would cover their tracks and lead you down a maze of obfuscation in meat and cyberspace. Normally, it would’ve been almost impossible for your typical edgerunner to breach through that obfuscation, but unfortunately for this Militech team, they were dealing with a merc whose former job at Arasaka had been all about Counter-Intel.

It had been my job to keep an eye on every employee who had the potential to be aggressively poached or on those who were looking to get poached and stop it from happening.

Common sense would say that the Militech snatch team would find a neighboring building that gave a direct line of sight on Matsui’s apartment and set up surveillance.

That was amateur hour.

Anyone trying to find the team there, would only find an occupied apartment with a very pissed off and surprised Driftkin inside. The apartment would’ve been bugged by the snatch team and they’d know immediately they were being hunted and that the gig was up. 

Now the challenge was to follow the data pathing of those bugs and do so without the Militech netrunner assigned to the team becoming aware of it.

And I immediately knew that the specific runner assigned to this was very good.

The data trails seemed to go in every direction in cyberspace, only to be bounced through signal routers and random servers all over Luna, before going out into orbit, only to come right back. It was like looking at a bowl of synthnoodles from the streetvendor at my old H10 Megabuilding, stretched into multiple dimensions. If that wasn’t bad enough, they had left quite sophisticated spyware daemons looking specifically for anyone trying to trace them.

I had to remind myself that these were the same people who had managed to train Songbird.

Now, this runner was nowhere near that level of sheer talent, but I could practically smell the tech and millions of eddies that had gone into training them.

Their daemons were good, but I was better.

I remained invisible to each one, seeing their scanning algorithms and adapting as I went. Eventually getting a feel for how this runner coded them. Some of them were also not their work, clearly programmed by an entire team slaving away at some cubicle somewhere in Militech HQ in Washington DC.

It was a cookie cutter patchwork daemon that was even easier to subvert once you had solved any of its constituent parts.

Finally, between Butcher and myself we narrowed down a location.

“Got to admire the balls on this crew,” Johnny instantiated next to us in cyberspace as we surveyed the vast city of digital systems that controlled Tycho Mass Driver 2, located in the southern area of the crater.

I made an expansive gesture with my avatar’s arm, pulling in the data flow and manipulating our perspective, zooming in until we were looking at the Militech extraction team.

They were all posing as maintenance workers with perfectly forged credentials, holed up in an out of sight, disused storage area that had old maintenance tunnels not used since the original supporting construction for the Mass Driver had taken place. Any surveillance cameras that the highriders could’ve used to detect this team were long since broken, the hardlines cut or just plain neglected and forgotten about.

The only reason we could even see them was because we were using the Militech team’s own modernized sensors that they installed on their way in.

There were nine agents.

A surprisingly built male netrunner, who didn’t neglect his meatspace body, still jacked into a very fancy semi-portable rig and server combo, blissfully unaware and confident they were still invisible and no one had caught them.

Two teams of four Militech spec ops, dressed in scruffy vacsuit overalls and open helmets, wearing the logo of a known contractor that worked on the giant electromagnets of the Mass Driver.

Some were jacked into localized braindance wreaths, that I would bet was rehearsing dozens of different extraction scenarios that had been wargamed. Others were doing equipment checks and weapon maintenance.

Butcher threw up what personnel profiles he could reference from a bootlegged and copied Militech database. It wouldn’t be totally up to date or completely accurate, but it was enough for us to understand just who we were dealing with.

Unsurprisingly, all of them were veterans of the 2070 Unification War.

Military grade chrome was the norm, but not the latest stuff. If this bunch were killed, their corpses had to tell the correct story. Surprise, speed and preparation was their primary weapon and it had been breached and nullified.

With surprise on our side, It would be a walk in the park for me and Johnny to fight these guys in meatspace.

Just how Militech had sprung the leak to Night Corp and Blackhand was something I’d dearly like to know, but I accepted that it was far from my own biz at the moment.

Now the question was how to get this specific team out of play.

We were hired to protect Dr. Matsui in all respects, so she could continue her work. Blackhand had not specified how we should do it or that we couldn’t eventually bring in others.

“Loud or quiet, you think?” I asked Johnny.

He played with his avatar’s beard idly as he thought about it, “They’ve conveniently put themselves into a spot that’s perfect for loud. We won't have to worry about bringing Tycho PD down on our heads, as long as we don't fuck up.”

“Any reason to go non-lethal here?” I asked out of formality. My old Counter-Intel instincts always preferred to catch, interrogate, then dispose only if necessary.

“These gonks are dead already V. Whether by our hand or being disappeared by their bosses for the fuck up. We can at least give them a quick one.”

“Fine. Butcher, put your best crawlers, deamons and spyware to watch over the good doctor. Let’s go.”

8888888888888888888888888888888888

Getting to the Militech team subtly without sending up red flags of our own was its own challenge.

We couldn’t go loaded for bear, with armored vacsuits and military rated weaponry, traipsing through Tycho City, unless we wanted to bring the highriders to the party. I wanted to hold off on that, even though it was assuredly in their interest to also protect Matsui. The problem was we couldn’t know what taps and back channels the Militech runner had into highrider communications. It was almost certain that they would have, as it's what I would do as a priority were I in the shoes of this snatch team.

So Johnny and I left our apartment looking Tycho-city casual - and I finally had a top that didn’t show underboob for days.

We also had our rail pistols disassembled and tucked into our respective Samurai jackets, which I had lined with scan resistant materials. The other bit of kit that we wore around our necks was emergency vac collars - which would essentially burst into a rudimentary pressure suit around our bodies in case of potential decompression. They were generally shit and you could barely move properly once they did their thing, but at least you wouldn’t die. That would be more of a worry for Johnny though, as I could technically have a naked jog outside so long as I had a proper pressurized oxygen source covering my head.

Job number one of this gig, involved losing our very well intentioned highrider tails that took their orders from Gakulu.

We managed that with a double back maneuver, a little quickhack to induce a distraction in a city vending machine and judicious use of a crowd, just before we hit the lifts to the upper levels of the city.

From there it was a matter of hacking every surveillance camera as we moved, effectively turning us invisible to every algorithm and Mark One eyeball looking at the screens.

I knew disappearing like this would send up some red flags of its own, but we’d face the inevitable inquisition after this was done.

On the surface level, we continued using crowd blending techniques, until we reached the southern industrial sectors.

The partially buried tubes that connected the central public domes to the industrial domes were access controlled with minimal oversight from any guards, which made it easy to hack and waltz straight through as if we both belonged to the place. Sure we weren’t in any sort of hard vac suit or overall, but we knew how to walk in a way that said we belonged there.

We ducked into a security door that I unlocked with a quickhack and found ourselves in a minor server junction for the local control and sensor systems of the corridor. It was half the size of my old H10 apartment and we ignored all the screens and server blades in favor of the secured hatch in the floor.

Johnny put his Gorilla Arms to use and ripped the thing straight off, quickhacking the local sensors moments before he had done the deed.

“Cutting it close there, Johnny.”

He shrugged and began reaching into his jacket to reassemble his iron.

I followed his example and a quick dry fire confirmed it worked, before we loaded our magazines and jumped down the hatch.

The drop was nearly twenty-nine feet. Easily done on Luna, but I lightly grabbed hold of the ladder to slow the speed down to the extent that I barely needed to bend my knees.

A quick check in either direction showed we had no company. This was an active maintenance tunnel festooned with piping that was pushing water, oxygen, treated sewerage and others in both directions.  

We took the southerly direction, pistols raised and I had a cornucopia of quickhacks queued and ready to fly.

The maze of passageways down here was enough to make anyone dizzy, unless you had the latest map data streaming into your digital consciousness.

The key was to get to the point where the Militech team had gone off the map to hide themselves.

Thankfully, they had been so helpful in creating physical data taps into the city’s systems to get their own access point, which nicely pointed to the first location we would check out.

After nearly half a dozen turns and tearing our way through locked doors, we finally hit the first paydirt.

The data links were physically well hidden behind ducting and pipes, but with our digital senses in cyberspace referencing meatspace coordinates and my internal scanning suite, it was a cakewalk. It was also the spot where a makeshift door had been created, leading directly into the abandoned sections of the tunnel network.

‘All right, Johnny. The air in here might be a problem, so keep an eye on your biometrics. I’ll be the canary and take point.’

A quick scan showed a rudimentary sensor that would send an alert to our quarry that their door had been opened.

I brought my left hand carefully forward and lit its tooling function unfurl.

My forefinger split open, dividing and dividing down to maniples that at their smallest was just about the width of a human hair. It was the world’s fanciest multi-function tool knife and was the more advanced version of Toolhand cyberware. A few minutes later, I had the sensor cut open and laid bare, whilst crucially still sending its all clear signal. A bypass later and I had it looping.

A quick grab and pull later, and the makeshift door easily opened.

The abandoned tunnel adjacent was in utter darkness and we had to move to IR assisted DNV to make any sense of what was ahead.

Another quick scan had me freeze dead still and block the way.

‘Don’t move, Johnny. Motion sensor down the tunnel.’

‘Fuck.’

One hack later and it was spoofed.

We finally moved forward into the tunnel, turning off our mag boots. It was just too risky as it would be child’s play to rig a sensor into the tunnel grid floor to register that someone was coming. This slowed us down considerably, forcing us to adopt a cat-like walk, moderating how much force we put onto the ground and to keep our own footsteps silent.

Sneaking around on the moon was a bitch.

It took long minutes just to traverse that first corridor and our first turn at the intersection revealed more fun surprises from the Militech team, a heat sig and seismic sensor combo, tuned for a human footstep.

A hack later and we were moving past that.

That was just the beginning and it felt like I was essentially doing the Konpeki Plaza heist, but on the fly and taking on the role of Solo and Runner in one.

Three hours of tense sneaking and hacking passed by. Even though we had passed by the dense concentration of portable sensors the Militech team had left to watch their six, we couldn’t afford to get sloppy.

Finally, a bright light in the distant end of the tunnel and at that moment everything shook, shaking lunar dust loose. A rumbling cacophony that seemed to penetrate into the very marrow of our bones, before dying down.

‘Well, looks like we’re near the Mass Driver,’ Johnny commented.

We were very close now to the team’s position and with the light came the first standard security cam they had installed. I had to spoof and loop this one, taking extra care. The runner was bound to be keeping a much closer eye on the security of their inner perimeter.

‘Dr. Matsui has left the Mitsubishi building and is heading to her apartment,’ Butcher reported.

I could feel the data flow from the enemy runner pick up significantly as he turned his attention towards the surveillance they had on their target.

‘How fortunate for us, keeps him looking outward,’ I smirked.

We knelt on either side of the door that, unlike others we had passed, showed signs of being cleaned and didn’t have a sprinkling of lunar regolith.

A final check on the position of each Militech agent.

The room beyond was a fairly large depot, storage for the handheld excavation power tools. A dozen empty large racks from floor to ceiling, which had been pushed to the side, leaving open space for the team to spread out their gear and even make a little home away from home.

Couches in one corner, rations spread over a table. The netrunner and his rig were in another corner, but in the center of the room was a large ovoid device that I couldn’t make heads or tails of at first. Then I spotted the ablative shielding on one side and took in the clear aerodynamic lines.

A single occupant atmospheric reentry vehicle, with two of the agents standing around it and performing system checks.

‘Hmmm, think that is for Matsui. They stuff her in there, sedative running. Next thing she knows she’s waking up on Earth. But they’re not getting that thing on any ship. Highriders and Mitsubishi will lock Tycho down first.’

‘Militech knows that, Johnny. So they’re not going to use a ship.’ I pointed above our heads as the tunnel rumbled from the shot of another Mass Driver load.

‘That’s fucking crazy. The Mass Driver? They’re gonna load her in it? She’ll get turned into salsa from the acceleration.’

‘Yet they’re still clearly going to do it, so they must have a way to make it survivable. Makes me curious what tech Militech has cooked up for it. All right, netrunner in his chair and three on the left, two in the middle, three on the right. I go left, you right, Short Circuit first, make sure you use my version so we turn them into walking EMPs. Malfunctions will take their guns out of play, so they’re going to charge us down if we fuck up.’

‘Got it.’

I stood carefully and took a slow step back from the door, readying my right leg.

‘On three… one… two… three!’

My foot drove forward with the full force available to my combat Gemini.

The old steel door was torn off its runners, out of its track and sent forward like a spinning battering ram.

It had enough speed and momentum imparted on it to cover the distance all the way to the other side of the depot.

It encountered the two Militech agents working on the pod first, practically bowling them over.

With our Sandy’s on full cognitive acceleration, Johnny powered into the room.

My first shot found the side of the runner’s head, whilst the Short Circuit washed over a brawny agent carrying a rifle near the team’s small arsenal.

He started immediately shuddering, convulsing, visible arcs playing over his body and the EMP radiated outwards, catching the nearby agent as well.

Johnny’s first shot blew the head apart of another opponent, sending blood and gray matter outward in a small expanding cone that expanded outwards under our accelerated perception, helped by the low-grav environment.

A second Short Circuit induced EMP hit his side of the room.

I put the agent convulsing out of his misery with another head shot as Johnny found another mark.

That left three members of the opposition free to react, only one of which had a Sandy, which military grade reflex enhancement activated.

He pulled out his own pistol, aiming straight for me but his eyes widened as his weapon failed to fire.

Instead, he got to watch in slow motion as the rail pistol’s battery overheated and exploded with an actinic flash in his hands.

The hypersonic bullet from my pistol went straight through his skull sponge, ending the threat.

The two on the ground from the impromptu use of the door as a battering ram, were bringing up their own pistols, aiming on both me and Johnny. 

It was only now that I could overcome the sheer physics of what I had done, the friction of my boots and my legs exerting just enough force to launch me forward into a dive.

My next shot caught the prone agent on the left, boring through his neck first before entering his brain case from below.

Johnny got the final guy on the right as I reached the prone agent.

My elbow rammed into his neck, powering and cracking through the military bone lacing, severing the spinal cord.

Synapse Burnouts from both Johnny and I got the final agent, leaving him dead with cooked nerves.

Not wanting to get a faceful of dusty lunacrete as my dive was reaching its natural conclusion, I pushed my hands forward and tucked into a roll.

Our Sandy’s lapsed and went on cooldown.

I surged to my feet and scanned the entire room quickly for further threats, right to left, pistol leading the way.

Only a single survivor and he was unconscious on the floor from Johnny’s Short Circuit.

‘Need this guy to talk, V?’

I considered it for a moment. ‘No.’

The room echoed with another shot.

“Butcher, status?”

“No change, Dr. Matsui remains nominal.”  

“Good, now time to face the music.”

88888888888888888888888888888888

Gakulu power walked into the room, his mag boots almost groaning, echoing harshly with the clatter of steel on steel.

His eyes roamed over the specialist team from his black ops workgroup, taking notes and making sure they were doing their job in processing the very sensitive scene. Examining the bodies of the slain Militech agents and scouring their onboard cyberware for useful intel. His own netrunner was already partially plugged into the Militech server rig, using a secondary cyberdeck as a quarantine to carefully sift through the data, whilst also battling the on-board ICE.

Something that was not as lethal as it would otherwise, without a hostile runner fighting you.

His eyes flashed as he saw me kneeling next to the reentry pod, along with Johnny casually leaning against it.

My physical interface plug was hooked into it and I was rather fascinated by the hardware I was scanning.

“V, Hollow,” Gakulu said through gritted teeth. “Do you want to know how you ruined my morning?”

“I can imagine well enough, Manager. Giving my minders a thorough reprimand for losing me and a complete review of the security around Dr. Matsui? 

“Precisely! A name you shouldn’t even know!” He stopped the head of steam he was working up and took a calming breath. Judging by the reactions of the highriders in the room, they were very relieved that their boss was reigning himself in and not demanding heads. “Start at the beginning.”

“We were hired to protect Dr. Matsui. Naturally, I can’t tell you by whom. Our client became aware of an in-progress operation by Militech to try and abduct Matsui from Tycho. We were in a prime position and time to intervene, so we did so. Better to do it now, rather than risking this lot to carry out their plan and having to deal with a kidnap and rescue scenario. I hate those, one unlucky bullet and the whole gig is blown. As it is, these guys had a very high chance of actually pulling it off.” I unplugged my link from the pod and patted its matt black surface. “This Earth capable reentry vehicle can seat one person and is designed to not only keep the occupant sedated, but also immerses them in a fluid oxygen environment. Combine that with a single-use High G compensator that burns itself out, and you have the perfect means to escape Tycho and Luna, by using the Mass Driver. After all, what’s the one thing you would never think to shut down in a scenario where you’re locking down the spaceports after Matsui falls off the grid?”

Gakulu closed his eyes and cursed rapidly under his breath. “One of the primary reasons that the Highrider economy remains afloat. I don’t suppose we can conclusively prove this was Militech?”

“Sorry umphati, (boss)” the highrider netrunner shook his head. “The groundsiders came prepared. The moment V flatlined this runner, it let loose a virus that scrubbed everything on this rig. Deadman switches on the cyberware. Only reason we can tell that they’re Militech is their IDs and work history, but they’re not officially employed.”

“Yes, I suppose it was too much to hope that they’d be sloppy for once. All right Lizo, I want this entire place scanned, catalogued and then scrubbed. All records classified to Mfusa level.”

“Understood, umphati.”

Gakulu beckoned us to follow.

Once we were walking outside he folded his hands behind his back, “Do you know the importance of Dr. Matsui’s research?”

I considered playing my cards close to the chest. Every professional instinct I had told me to keep on being the mercenary, only hired to do the job, never told why. Yet for some reason, Blackhand had given us the ‘why’. The man who was the posterchild, the original standard for what it meant to be a merc, had told us the reason for our gig.

Was the man going soft in his advanced age? Or was he seeing something about all this that we weren’t?

“Yes.”

“Hayi suka, (Oh, come on),” he muttered under his breath. “Now, don’t misunderstand me, V, Hollow. You have my personal gratitude and that of the Highrider Confed for foiling this plot. However, you’ve just been pushed into a level of classification that no one besides the upper echelons have any business being in. That your client knows is already a disaster of epic proportions. It means we have a greater security leak that needs to be plugged. There is still a part of me that wants to throw you both into interrogation.”

“Then do the next best thing, recruit us.”

He actually chuckled, “Looking to get paid twice for the same job? Not surprising. The problem is, I don’t know if your client won’t at some point issue instructions that run contrary to highrider interests.”

“That’s a possibility,” I admitted with a shrug. “But how about if I agree that we will give you a warning should such instructions come from the client. It would allow you to prepare and work around us.”

Gakulu frowned and for a while we just walked as he thought about the offer. “Maybe. Tell me at least this, do you think your client is looking to eventually gain sole control of Matsui and the technology she’s working on?”

“They definitely want to see it developed and succeed. Whether they want monopoly… I honestly don’t know.”

“Very well. Consider yourselves recruited. Standard fees with potential extreme hazard ops bonuses. You know that if Matsui succeeds, it’ll be a game changer not just for the highriders, but a number of other industries. Corps will want it for themselves and will not be interested in sharing. Combine that with the new iteration of Relic and we’re sitting on two golden eggs, V and the wolves have already started circling around.”

8888888888888888888888888888888888

A/N: More plots and interests afoot that you can shake a stick at. It's cyberpunk, after all. Hope you enjoyed and have an awesome weekend!