2078: Highriders - Chapter 5

The casino floor was left in my wake through a few quick hacks of every surveillance cam with a sightline on me in the street outside.

The station’s dweller was still dealing with the mess that the now dead Arasaka runner had made in his assault, so I had little opposition in slipping through the cracks. I broke the sightline from any casino patron passing by and ducked into a public restroom that I knew had no one currently inside.

After a command to my Agent, my smart clothes changed; the Silverhand jacket becoming more of a half-jacket with shorter sleeves, partially baring my forearms, losing the Samurai logo and the color changing to bright green. My low rise leggings became knee shorts, whilst my bustierre shrunk to a red boob tube.

A few moments later after enduring the shift, Elaine Paigles was back in the real and digital realms.

One change of shoes later and I was walking back out of the restroom.

Only for my hand to begin painfully twitching as another attack of rejection hit me.

‘Fuck off, not now. We’re nearly there!’ I thought in anger.

I kept walking, holding a fist, even as the RealSkin on my arm bulged then contracted rapidly as the malfunction continued.

By the time I was standing in front of the spoke elevator to leave the Torus, it had settled down somewhat, but I kept my guard up. It wouldn’t do to accidently punch a hole in someone just because they had the bad luck to stand next to me at the wrong time.

Even dealing with that, I couldn’t afford the distraction. Time had run out on my ‘insurance policy’, so I sent the virtual Rachel Mcadams back to her unconscious self in real space. She had been there as both an identity to slip into in an emergency, create a false trail in cyberspace and prepare the way for my gig in the casino.

She was also serving as a welcome distraction for the station dweller, sending him scrambling down a false path as a probable way that the Yurei of Night City would have infiltrated the station.

The doors to the elevator opened and it was no surprise to see Mr. Blue Eyes standing next to a gaggle of other people, some with baggage cases and suitcases.

I walked inside and came to a casual stop next to him.

His encrypted call came as the elevator doors closed.

“Nicely done, V. The entire planet is buzzing already.”

“That was quick.”

“Lucia Watson, CTO of WNS, hasn’t personally broken a story for nearly two decades now. She’s always been a media at heart and you handed her a gold plated story that will see the corp rake in millions. So, mission accomplished, V.”

“You have my payment?”

Blue’s reply was via an eddie transfer of seven figures, that pinged on my primary business account, included in that was a ticket and visa for a trip to Tycho city on Luna for a duration of a year.

“It took some doing but the Highrider Confed agreed. Why so long, V?”

“I have business there that might require an extended stay,” I answered carefully.

Blue’s mouth quirked, “Well, I know better than to ask for what that business is. Your tasks have been concluded to my satisfaction, V. You have my thanks and you can expect future business from me and those in my orbit.”

I forced myself to be optimistic, “I look forward to that business.”

“Safe travels V. I know you did your homework, but be careful around highriders. A fight with one, is a fight with their entire ‘tribe’ or workgroup and there’s nothing more they enjoy than finding offense with a surface dweller.”

“I’ll certainly keep that in mind.”

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It ended up being a nearly six hour wait in the rotating docking core of the Crystal Palace, whilst it took nearly two hours to go through the administrative core before that.

The station police had been thoroughly spooked and were scrutinizing everyone with extra care.

I had already been scanned five times, first by going through customs and then by roaming police.

The ESA was walking a very fine line though. Europol couldn’t be too intrusive as that risked offending some very powerful people.

Finally, the Orbital Air spacecraft docked.

I could just barely catch a glimpse of it through the massive ‘windows’.

It was roughly 120 meters in length from its nose to the engine thrusters below, shaped almost like a massive dart, with a white-gray hull stenciled with the corp logo.

“Orbital Air Flight 3150 bound for Tycho City, now boarding,” the always pleasant female voice announced throughout the lounge.

I reached down to my feet, pulled off my stilettos and wriggled into the dark black and rather ugly mag boots I had been issued. My Agent handshaked with the small computer inside and a small hum was heard as the boots stuck themselves to the decking.

Carefully standing, in the 0.2 of standard gravity, as the docking core had a much smaller radius than the rest of the station, I carefully mag-walked towards the pretty smiling hostess monitoring everyone submitting their digital tickets.

It was an awkward walk - you had to visibly pause for a moment to allow the boot to adhere properly with each step, or else you risked jumping off nearly half a meter into the air.

“Please, code in here, ma’am.”

I placed my hand on the scanner pad, letting my Agent in conjunction with Butcher, do the work of making sure that the faceplate and metanthropic system did their job. It couldn’t be known that V was on Luna and I wasn’t feeling good or confident enough to do any netrunning at the moment.

The final scanner that stood over the threshold of the docking corridor was neatly bamboozled by Butcher into not seeing the priceless painting in my bag.

I breathed an inward sigh of relief as I took the first steps beyond it.

At the inner airlock to the spacecraft, I was greeted by two flight hostesses, dressed in the classic Orbital Air uniform that could trace its lineage back to the mid 20th Century. These were made of modern metamaterials, showed a lot of leg at the skirt, hugged every curve and could become a vacuum survival suit in moments.

I appreciated the view very much and stepped onto the spacecraft’s own airlock.

Finally, in the interior, I was guided by another hostess to the left towards the fore area of the ship.

Mrs. Paigles naturally had the wealth to afford first class, so I followed another hostess who called to me by name and guided me to my personal cabin.

It was about three cubic meters that was personally all mine, on a craft where space was at a premium. It had a seat that could fold all the way down into a bed and was surrounded by comfort and amenities; standard TV, braindance wreathe, a tiny complimentary drinks bar and the left wall was projecting a live view of the ship docked to the Crystal Palace.

I took off my jacket and carefully maneuvered myself into the sinfully luxurious seat.

“Mrs Paigles?” said the breathtaking redhead hostess, standing at the cabin door.

“Yes?”

“You’ve flown with us before, but since it’s only your second voyage into the Dark, if there’s any questions or uncertainty, please don’t hesitate to use your Agent to summon me.”

“I’ll do that, thanks,” I smiled and curled my brows curiously. “That’s a rather morbid way to refer to space.”

The hostess chuckled and shrugged, “Highrider slang, ma’am. I’m not one of them, but when you work in space long enough the lingo has a way of creeping in.”

“I’m sure it does. Thank you, I’ll be sure to call if I need anything.”

The hostess left and I definitely appreciated the way her posterior jiggled within the uniform with each magboot step she took.

I sat back and eyed the braindance wreathe, but settled for basic TV, adjusting the screen to show to the local Orbital Air channel that showed a general status screen for the ship itself, including a nice big graphic that showed the course it would take towards the moon.

Crystal Palace was stationed in a ‘medium’ earth orbit or MEO at 900 km. The OA spacecraft, which was rated only for vacuum travel, would detach and after coasting out of the security perimeter, would initiate a direct burn for lunar orbit.

The flight itself would take thirty hours, before the craft burned to slow down to be captured by Luna gravity. There would be only one phasing orbit needed before another short engine burn, to make a slight inclination change for an efficient landing descent to Tycho City.

“You buttoned up, Butcher?” I thought.

“I’m pulling the last of my programs from local cyberspace now.”

“Good. I’ve made an enemy of the station’s dweller. Don’t want to give him more reason by being sloppy with the hacks we’ve made.”

I idled away the time by channel surfing on the TV. Being on an OA spacecraft meant I had a far greater selection than just what we got in Night City’s tightly controlled broadcast spectrum. The news channels I avoided for now, because it would only have surface level reactions to the first Edgerunner operating on the Crystal Palace and LEO for that matter. So I stuck with the pure entertainment and movie channels, enjoying the novelty of seeing some of the channels from the UK and Europe for the first time.

“This is your captain speaking. We are refueled and all system checks are in the green. Airlocks are closed and we will undock in one minute. An emergency procedure vid will play after this announcement. Thank you for flying with Orbital Air.”

The captain’s voice intruded into the cabin so clearly that it almost felt like the guy was right next to my ear. My screen abruptly changed from the very racy French drama to an image of a supermodel perfect OA flight attendant that began narrating the various safety procedures, helpfully displayed with animations on the side.

Then the presentation definitely had a specific cut that was clearly intended only for those in first class.

“Your cabin is actually an OA proprietary survival pod, that in the event of an emergency, can be safely ejected from the spacecraft. It is designed to automatically take you to the nearest OA orbital facility, anywhere in Earth-Lunar space. Where you will be rescued and given complimentary tickets to any destination OA covers.”

“Oh yeah and the less rich gonks in economy class get to share a big life pod that probably doesn’t have the DeltaV to go anywhere,” I declared sarcastically, speaking to myself.

The safety demo finished and I was right back to watching the story of two French corpos scheming about getting rich off their boss’ literal demise. It was generally a plan that could only work in fiction, but it was amusing.

I felt a slight thump echo through the ship and the huge mass of the Crystal Palace that dominated my viewscreen began to pull away as the OA craft used its RCS thrusters. The little centrifugal gravity there was vanished and I secured myself with a seatbelt.

The episode was halfway finished and the Palace was so far away that I could cover it with my hand, when the captain announced, “Translunar injection burn in three, two, one.”

I felt the G-load of the thrusters briefly before the onboard grav systems compensated enough to keep it to a mere 1.5Gs whilst the ship actually ramped up to a 6G burn.

This was bleeding edge tech that was only now beginning to find its way out of experimental labs and into use by OA, ESA and Arasaka. Millitech was lagging a bit behind in its introduction, but would catch up by the end of the year, if you believed their screamsheets.

96 seconds later, the rumble of the engines cut out.

“Burn complete, we are on course for Luna. There will be a mid-course correction burn in twelve hours, until then feel free to relax and enjoy complimentary inflight entertainment and the latest braindances from the best studios in the world.”

“Butcher, gonna pass out now. No harvesting anyone unless they want to kill me.”

“I’ll keep watch, V. Enjoy your shutdown.”

I chuckled at the AI and leaned back in my seat.

A quick set of my sleep cycle and I was pulled into a wonderful eight hours of blissful oblivion.

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A descending foot splashed a puddle of red water.

My breath was harsh through the filter that was of barely any use against the particulate matter hanging around us. Steady dripping rain began echoing among the ruins our little group was steadily, cautiously moving through.

It soon became a torrent that poured down in a dull roar that played havoc with our ears. Sound became utterly useless as an early warning for any danger.

My hands clutched and flexed on my assault rifle, the stock digging into my shoulder as I traversed the aim right to left, my optics scanning into every possible nook and cranny. The problem was there were just too many possibilities around us in the ruins of this nuked city.

The little trefoil emblem of a radiation hazard flashing in my HUD optics was a constant reminder of the constantly ticking clock this mission and our lives were on. The general rad dose we were getting was cutting years off our lives with every day spent here, but there was little hope in these times that anyone would see forty, let alone sixty years or older. Living for so long was only for the rich and those who had plunged the world into the mess that it was currently in.

Damien was on point and abruptly held up a fist to halt our advance, before gesturing down.

Our little group of six knelt immediately, dividing up our sectors of fire and scanning for any blip in the EM bands, even though it was certainly a lost cause with all this radiation fouling everything. It at least meant that any potential opposition was wading through the same shit, so the odds were generally even on that front.

His hand signals followed, communicating that his small crawler drone had found something and was on its way back. Things were so bad here, that we couldn’t even risk point to point radio comms between our team members, even though we were within spitting distance of each other. The drone was also under EMCON and only squirted through the most basic signals back to Damien in random intervals.

The drone clambered on the edge of a ruined wall lining the pockmarked and cratered street, before clambering down to street level and straight onto Damien’s back, where it interfaced with his tac rig to deliver the recon data.

I could see his body language shift immediately as he comprehended it, his shoulders slumping slightly.

His right hand came up again and with more signals he began relaying his conclusions.

Primary exfil route - non viable.

Secondary - non viable.

Tertiary - remains viable but potential hostiles expected.

Fucking hell.

I referenced the Tertiary plan with my Agent and the route was highlighted on a rough wire diagram map of the city. It was an almost useless gesture given that the map was based on the undamaged pre-nuke version, overlaid with some weeks old satellite data. It would’ve been nice to get that satellite’s help right now, but it had become a million pieces of debris in LEO after the very short orbital front of the war had occurred.

Damien gestured sharply forward.

I got to my feet and kept my eyes peeled in my sector as we advanced.

Out of the corner of my optics, the reason for us being in this hellhole was just barely visible and I was very glad that it wasn’t my job to manage the package.

To think about what was inside was very unwise, so naturally it was the thing that was mostly occupying my thoughts, besides that oddly catchy melody that came to me in a dream last night. I had dictated it in musical notation to my Agent at least, but there was no substitute for my synth deck.

Pneumo barely held in a curse as the package’s right wheel got stuck in a pothole and he tugged hard on the line to get it out, before raising his pistol to belatedly keep his sector of fire covered.

He was not happy.

Which netrunner worth their salt would be happy if they were reduced to being the team muscle. There was no proper net left in this ruin of a city that was worth running and the only network that we’d find would be a mobile one, assuredly belonging to the bad guys.

We turned right at the next intersection, using the carcasses of burnt out cars as cover where possible. It would do little to help against any rail gun or sniper fire, but remaining unseen was the primary goal and with the rain, the sound of our movement would be masked. The package especially made a relative racket that would be picked up with any decent sound sensor aimed in our direction.

We were barely a hundred yards down this street, walking around the wrecked remains of a crashed combat AV that bore the wound of a direct missile strike-

“Contact right! Twenty meters!”

The rapid staccato of Trace’s rifle fire echoed in the street. 

I dove for the ground, my heart thudding in my throat, but the practiced skill and instincts of thousands of hours of training and experience took over.

My optics spotted movement to my left, barely a blip through a gap in the ruined wall and heaped rubble beyond.

My aim shifted and I pulled the trigger, my rifle’s recoil pushing into my shoulder with rapid thumps.

The tungsten AP rounds clipped the wall at first, but my third and fourth burst of rounds went straight through the gap.

My Agent couldn’t give me any reports of successful hits on target, thanks to all the soup clouding every sensor we were wearing on our harnesses.

I unclipped a grenade from my hip, rolled into the cover of wrecked AV to get to my knees, pulled the pin and overhand lobbed it towards the potential enemy position.

“Grenade out!” I warned over the team channel, breaking my own radio silence.

It landed slightly long than where I had aimed. The thump of its explosion and shrapnel spray managed to reach my ears even through the rain.

More gunfire from the team rattled out.

I scanned my sector furiously with detail, even going active emission, which just returned a garbled mess that my Agent could barely make heads or tails out of.

“Cease fire! Cease fire!” called Kepler, our team’s nominal leader in the field. “Pneumo, package status?”

“Undamaged.”

“Good. I managed to get one. Lilayah’s grenade wounded another. The rest retreated to lick their wounds.”

“Any ID?” I asked.

“Nothing definitive, might be a scout vanguard for another merc squad, might be Arasaka. I’d normally want to check the bodies, but it’s too dangerous.”

I got to my feet properly and changed my rifle’s mag for a fresh one. It would be nice to get confirmation of just who that was, but surety was a luxury we could not afford in this environment. Arasaka’s typical losing tactic was to trigger actual kamikaze cyberware in their downed soldiers during the war, the cyberware waiting until proximity sensors detected anyone who could be the enemy before detonating.

Typical counter-tactics was to send disposable drone swarms onto the enemy bodies to detonate them before friendly troops could move in. Arasaka had countered with updating the cyberware to distinguish if it was a human soldier or a drone. Now every enemy dead was treated as a mine that was just waiting to go off. The cyberware was being phased out by Arasaka as a condition of the post-war treaty, but there were still a lot of men and mercs that had the stuff and not enough qualified docs to remove them safely.

“All right, we keep going. Damien, send your drone out again. Remain under EMCON.”

I sighed in annoyance and rejoined formation as our team continued advancing.

The red tinged rain poured down even stronger now, the droplets were fat and splashing high off the ruined asphalt of the street and within moments it was like we were wading through a river of blood.

I wanted to scream in frustration, but managed to keep it in.

I wanted out of this miserable city.

I wanted my synthdeck in hand and playing in front of a small crowd at the club, that’s all.

But no, this fucked up world wouldn’t even let me have that little pleasure.

If this package didn’t get to its destination, then some fucked up psycho-gonk was going to use  it to fuck up more of the world - what little of it was left. We were just about managing to rebuild from the war, yet there were still assholes out there who played their fucked up games for their own profits and selfish interests. They lived as if the war was just another opportunity to take advantage. We had been inches away from the civilizational abyss, yet they still saw fit to poke and play with the edge of that cliff.

Now here we were, six mercs, who had unwittingly found themselves holding the figurative rope.

Our journey continued, moving agonizing mile by mile, awaiting the moment when our opposition would come back for round two.

Keeping concentration, readiness and my sector covered became more and more difficult.

The red rain made the ruin of the city come alive with movement, making it all that harder. Did that piece of rubble fall because of flowing water or had it been the boot of an Arasaka goon?

With the ruined and clogged drainage infrastructure, it wasn’t long before we ran into the first ‘river’. It looked to be just ankle height, but with the current light conditions it was a red liquid mirror. It was hiding every possible pothole or minor crater that could be a foot deep or a gap that could swallow someone completely into the wrecked underground tunnels.

Trying to cross this street might as well have been wading into a minefield. It was also the perfect spot for an ambush, due to the largely intact buildings that surrounded the intersection.

Damien halted us and with curt gestures ordered us to cover.

His crawler drone returned, its power supply running low and there was no way it would be able to cross this river.

He began relaying hand signals.

My instincts had been spot on; the drone had observed what seemed to be our opposition setting up a trap in the intersection. Six Arasaka ‘deserters’ turned merc and three actual edgerunners, one of whom was calling the shots.

I inwardly scoffed. There was no such thing as Arasaka deserters, not when Saburo could flick a switch in Osaka and kill any traitor in the continental US trying such a thing. No, this was a deniable ops squad, plain and simple. Anyone who thought the Old Man would stop playing his game just because he had lost the 4th Corporate War was simply deluding themselves. 

The question remained, how were we going to cross this artificial river under enemy fire, lugging the package which could get bogged down or swallowed into the possible watery depths below?

Damien at least had the beginning of a plan.

He handed out shards he’d burned in his tech rig to each of us. Even making the perilous journey to the other side of the street where Kepler, Pneumo and Zara were hunkered down. 

I gave Trace an ominous look as I slotted the shard. The media turned merc nodded in agreement with me at the sentiment.

My Agent integrated the data and my virtual city map was updated with the recon data of the crawler drone.

It gave us exact positions for where the opposition was waiting, it estimated their fields of fire and even what weapons they were visibly packing. It was all military grade cast-offs from the war.

There was no way we could advance through that.

I might as well be looking at a solid wall of death.

We could open fire from cover, but that would see us getting a face full of lead and micro-rockets. The only reason we weren’t under fire already was because the enemy thought we were unaware of their presence and was waiting for us to wade into the river.

Fuck! What were we gonna do?!

Was there any way to retreat and find another route?

It was a question I hadn’t even directed to my Agent, but my thoughts were so scatterbrained and desperate that it had picked up on it and delivered an answer.

Yes, there were three routes to bypass the intersection and this river, but it meant taking much longer and there was no guarantee the routes were accessible and hadn’t been closed down by a fallen building or a collapsed overpass. We were on a timer regarding our rad exposure and our opposition could just relocate as well as we could.

There was only one way forward, by fire and force.

I looked at Kepler across the street as she came to terms with the plan Damien outlined. Her optics narrowed over her filtration mask and the hand signals came.

My nerves and the hollow feeling in my stomach was banished as I unhooked a seeker grenade from my harness, instructing my Agent to program in a target trajectory for the two enemy edgerunners on my side of the street.

Trace shook his head but also pulled out his own grenade.

A few moments later, every member of the team had followed suit, waiting with primed seekers in hand and Kepler’s signal.

Tension ratcheted up in the team-

THERE WAS disjunction-

My point of view was torn away from Lilayah and I was once again Valerie, standing as my virtual self behind her in the frozen world of a war-torn city during the Time of the Red.

I slapped my thigh in annoyance as a message from my Agent was injected into the braindance.

“Fine, end it.”

The world dissolved into a mass of disorganized pixels as I felt instantiated into my actual body in the first class cabin of the OA spacecraft.

My eyes blinked as I was greeted by Real Space and pulled off the BD wreath from my head.

On my left I was greeted with the bright white, pockmarked surface of Luna as seen from a mere sixty miles above the surface.

“We’re about to begin our powered descent burn, everyone please take your seats.”

“Just when it was getting good,” I muttered in annoyance, pulling out the shard from the BD wreathe.

It was plain and unadorned. It had been delivered to my mansion by drone courier and inquiries with the courier company had given no obvious answer who the sender was. Merely that the drone had been hacked, flew to the roof of Megabuilding H1, then went straight to my mansion to drop off the tiny package containing the series of BD shards.

This had happened during the frenetic prep work for my Crystal Palace gigs, so I had no time to do a detailed investigation. The only thing I could determine was that they were at least safe to slot and there wasn’t any malware.

I carefully placed the shard back into the original mobile phone sized container it had come in. It was one of five shards in the tiny case.

A case that was stamped with a single word ‘Veritas’.

“Truth,” I scoffed incredulously as my gaze was fixed on the lunar surface rapidly rolling past me at over 1600 meters per second. In a world of braindance editing, Soulkiller, Cynosure and psych surgery, what was the truth?

My view shifted, spinning around as the spacecraft flipped retrograde to bring its main engines to bear against its orbital speed. I put the small case back into my hidden left leg compartment and closed it up with a thought.

“Descent burn in three, two, one.”

The g-load pushed into me with a brief spike before it settled again in the mild feeling of suddenly weighing fifty percent more.

“Agent, release a net crawler for the Cyber6 edgerunner crew, anonymise it, full encryption, the usual precautions.”

With the signal lag between Earth and Luna, bandwidth restrictions, the search would take a while.

Most everyone in Night City knew about the Cyber6, who themselves had attained that elusive legendary status as a result of their exploits during the Time of the Red and the chaotic 2040s. Rogue had run ops and acted as a fixer on occasion for them through the Afterlife, when the bar was situated in the Upper Marina.

I briefly entertained the notion that she had sent me these BDs, but the whole clandestine nature was totally not her style. Rogue and I had a rather close relationship these days, she was an unofficial ‘big sister’ if I had to put a name to it, but it was still ‘just biz’ at the end of the day and we were also business partners thanks to my minority stake ownership in the Afterlife bar. With something like this, she would play straight with me, place the Cyber6 BDs straight into my hands and tell me to watch it on my way to the moon.

So who could manage to compile an on-rails BD based on the memories of one of the most famous Rockergirl mercs from the 40s? Lilayah and the rest of Cyber6 had flatlined during a gig in late ‘49, just as most solos who became Afterlife legends did. Her music was slightly more to my taste than Johnny’s style of hard rock - it was a melodic cybergrunge with heavy use of melancholic synth overtones.

The sheer value of these BDs, if it could be authenticated, would be huge to the right buyer.  

Yet, whoever had given it to me, didn’t want me to just sell it and now that I had been given a taste - I didn’t want to either.

It could also be a psy-op and the word ‘Veritas’ practically confirmed it.

The moon’s surface was now starting to rise up towards my view in a rapid cadence. A glance at the ship’s status channel showed me we had already shed more than half of our orbital velocity and the moon was greedily grabbing the ship that had now slowed into its gravitational influence.

Its main thrusters were steadily angled down, tilting the spacecraft further over and now the ship was moderating its fall with a steady counter burn.

Given that I had done my share of raw BD diving and had dated the best BD editor in Night City for the last eight months, I knew a lot of the nitty-gritty of braindancing through sheer osmosis that most didn’t know. The holy grail that the BD industry was searching for, was to find a way to pull experiences and worlds from out of the digital ether, either via AI or just plain building it out of a CAD program. Early attempts at doing so produced plainly fake environments and feelings. The BD user could tell immediately that the experience was artificial and lacked the indefinable essence of true experience. It was why BD actors were still a thing and you needed actual people with a BD recorder cyberware implanted, actually doing what was being portrayed.

These Veritas BDs had none of those tell-tale signs of artificiality, I was experiencing memory engrams and it meant I could only conclude two things.

Either Lilayah had a BD rec implant back in the Time of the Red, which was entirely possible, or she had been another unfortunate mind harvested by Arasaka’s Soulkiller AI and imprisoned within the top secret Mikoshi servers.    

Right until I blasted my way into Araska Tower last year and became the new poster child for disgruntled former employees who turned merc and kicked their old boss’ ass. Then forcibly gave the Alt Cunningham human-AI hybrid backdoor access to destroy Mikoshi. Who took all the minds imprisoned there and merged with them into an entirely new gestalt digital entity, but still retained the Alt Cunningham appearance.

“So why are you showing me this, Alt?” I said aloud.

Of course, I received no answer amid the rumbling hum of the engines within the spacecraft.

Soon the lunar surface was now a new horizon that stretched as far as my viewscreen would show and was making the final approach to Tycho City.

The colony was like a spider web of lunar hyper alloys and lights spread out across the 53 mile wide Tycho crater. The majority of the city was actually underground to shield from cosmic and solar radiation and had a population of over 40k.

The Highrider Confed tightly controlled that population and tourist count, since every breath taken in the colony was the result of a highrider’s labor to cultivate the oxygen producing plant life and to harvest the water from the moon’s polar regions. My potential year-long stay was already budgeted in those terms on their books.

Finally, the horizontal velocity of the ship was cancelled out and we began our final descent straight over the landing pads situated in the north-east of the colony.

Two huge metallic factory domes partially obscured my first in person view of the infamous Tycho mass drivers.

In peacetime, they were used to cheaply send products and mined ores towards orbital factories around Earth. In war, they had been used as a kinetic kill weapon against various targets by the ESA, the most infamous strike being a 2 ton moon rock against Colorado Springs during the Orbital War of 2008. Now they were under the control of the Highriders as their own ultimate deterrent against the surface dwellers getting any ideas that they needed their independence curtailed.

The engines rumbled sharply one final time and I felt the shock as the ship touched down on the lunar steel of the landing pad.

For a few anxious seconds everyone on board was waiting for the captain’s word.

“Welcome to Tycho City. All systems are secured. Docking tubes are extending and you will be clear to disembark in two minutes. Thank you for flying with Orbital Air.”

I vaguely heard the burst of applause and cheers from the passengers.

For all that space travel had become routine in this day and age, the chance of something going catastrophically wrong in an endeavor so complex was still quite high.

I undid my restraints and carefully stood in the lunar gravity, magnetizing my boots.

Only for my left leg to suddenly go numb briefly before a spike of paralyzing pain shot into me.

“Fuck!” I gasped.

For nearly three minutes my world was reduced to just my leg and the pain coursing through me.

“Mrs. Paigles, are you all right?”

The redhead flight hostess was standing in the open door to my cabin, worriedly looking at me. The pain had died down to a mild migraine equivalent, so I was coherent enough to just shake my head. “Not at the moment, but I will be.” I experimentally took an awkward step forward. If it wasn’t for my unyielding mag boots and the low gravity I’d have probably fallen over already.

I took another step on my bad leg, bracing myself. It worked fine at first, but then began twitching rather badly and I had to grab hold of the cabin door. Fuck, this wasn’t going to work.

“Can you call for a mobility chair?”

“Of course, ma’am, I’ll be right back. I’ll let TCX know to have one waiting for you as well.”

Not exactly the most dignified way to arrive, but I could afford it with this identity at least.

A minute later I was helped into the chair. It had tiny wheels and its own thrusters, in addition to being controllable by my Agent.

‘Butcher, take the wheel please.’ I asked as another bout of pain shot through me.

‘You will not cease to function now, V.’

‘No, I won’t, but this body it seems has finally had enough of me.’

I propped the clothing bag on my lap as the chair rolled and hissed through the tight quarters of the spacecraft.

I was among the last passengers to disembark. We left through the airlock and into a crystal glass elevator in a seven hundred feet tall docking tower with an expansive view of Tycho city and the nearby crater wall, which speared nearly two miles high into the lunar ‘sky’.

The elevator began descending, I was just focused on existing with the pain and not making a scene.

The brightness of the lunar day vanished as we went subterranean or should that be sublunanean?

It came to a stop in a brightly lit circular tunnel that went on for nearly eighty meters.

Butcher steered me forward onto the passenger conveyor belts, after letting the dozen other passengers get on first.

I leaned my head back on the seat and focused on fighting. Fighting the body that had been mine since birth, which had been usurped from me by Arasaka and that fucking Relic chip.

‘You will be mine for another day, asshole,’ I thought to it. ‘Don’t you fuck with me now that you see the finish line is here.’

The tunnel merged smoothly with a much longer one, it was more than a mile long and there were even small electric carts for passengers who didn’t want to stand for so long on the conveyor belt.

Butcher pushed my mobility chair to its top speed on the conveyor belt, which translated to a real speed that had the tunnel struts almost blurring on either side of me. He only had to slow down once he caught up with a standing passenger and even then, managed to maneuver around them.

The tunnel made a slight right turn and after a few minutes we got off the conveyor, where there was another scanning point.

“Mrs. Paigles.”

An OA steward was waiting with another mobility chair, which I transferred into with a wince of pain and twitches of my arms.

“Ma’am, OA has a complimentary clinic on Tycho, which you can make use of.”

“No, thank you. I’m going to another local clinic,” I sighed, holding back any displays of pain through sheer willpower. “How much to buy this chair straight off you?”

“I am not empowered to make such a sale, ma’am. However, as a first class passenger of OA, your standing is good enough for me to release it into your possession on a loan for thirty Earth days.”

“Good enough, thank you.”

The steward unwound the link from his wrist and after plugging it in briefly, I became aware of the chair’s computer being transferred to my temporary possession.

Beyond this scanner was another checkpoint, this one manned by three tall highriders wearing a brown skinsuit uniform with minimal decoration but they did have tiny rank insignia and ‘TCPD’  on their shoulders. They were armed with bright white painted pistols and elegant knives sheathed on their hips.

I managed to put my hand on their portable scanner for the visa entrance and Butcher thoroughly befuddled the main scanner behind them, letting them see Mrs. Paigles inoffensive cyberware loadout and not my own.

“Welcome to Luna, Mrs. Paigles. I hope you enjoy your stay with us,” said the senior highrider cop.

I nodded and marvelled somewhat that the Highriders still had a nationalized police force. It was totally unanswerable to any corporate interest from Earth. They had a chief, who directly reported to the local managerial ‘tribe’ of Tycho.

The gate in front of me opened and beyond was a sprawling terminal easily the equal of NCX spaceport.

It was filled with tourists, corpos, and highriders of every description into a bustling melting pot of people coming and going.

I didn’t have time to gawk, so Butcher piloted me through the throng with the efficient precision only an AI could achieve.

Finally, we emerged into the lobby where I scanned the people crowding behind the roped off bollards who were waiting to meet arriving passengers. In moments, I spotted a large digisheet being held up with my cover identity’s name hastily drawn on it.

It was being held up by a dusky skinned highrider teen with eager brown eyes. He was wearing a harness with all manner of tools, including a small oxygen mask and only a pair of tight white shorts.

“Ah, Mrs. Paigles, welcome, my name is Alhaadi,” he said brightly, in very accented English. “I’m here to show you to the place.”

‘Butcher?’

‘Scanning, transmitting recog signal.’

Alhaadi’s largely biological eyes flashed only slightly. Highriders generally used retinal imaging only and bioware adapted for low grav, high radiation environments.

‘Confirmed, he’s a rep from the black clinic.’

“Good, lead the way,” I said aloud with a wince.

We left the Tycho spaceport and moved directly onto the underground street, which was only sporadically busy. The roof over our head was made of regolith cement and ribbed steel struts, from which giant electric lamps hung that simulated daylight quite accurately. A nearby market was immediately in sight, catering to tourists and I could already smell exotic flavors and foods from the vendors there.

“How far?” I asked as we set off and joined the pedestrians heading south.

“Two and three quarter kilometers, Mrs. Paigles. I have something that can help with the pain, if you want.”

I shook my head, “No reason to make things more complicated when the time comes. You know?”

“I was briefed by Doctor Njeri, just in case you had complications on the way,” he nodded.  

“Any tram or public transport that can get us there sooner?” 

“That would be problematic for our secrecy, Mrs. Paigles.”

“Figured that,” I sighed, gritting my teeth as my left hand involuntarily twitched, forming a fist and opening with enough strength that would’ve wrecked my mobility chair had I not lifted it out of the way. Alhaadi looked at me wearily and increased the separation between us. “Just get me there. I have to fight a battle within myself now.”

I leaned my head back and was only vaguely aware of the passing sights and people, as my focus turned inward.

Tourists and surface dwellers became less frequent until the majority of people around me were highriders.

We entered a large freight lift some time later and travelled even deeper.

I struggled to remain cognizant of our route, as we got off and into a place that could’ve been a warehouse filled with rows and rows of vacuum sealed pallets stacked to the ceiling.

My biomonitor started flashing warnings at me in my vision; low blood pressure being the most alarming.

Alhaadi turned left and right among the rows randomly but with clear purpose, until he finally stopped in front of a large ore mining shipping pallet that was big enough to fit a truck into. He placed his long fingered hand on a random spot, which opened to reveal a scanner.

Locks clicked and the massive pallet door swung open.

Beyond was a ramp leading deeper down into the floor and another more modern elevator that could’ve been pulled straight out of Night City.

‘Almost there, V,’ Butcher actually sounded… encouraging?

It was really tempting now to just… close my eyes… no!

I grit my teeth, banishing the thought as this new elevator took us further down.

When these doors opened again, beyond was a hyper sterile, bright environment bristling with tech that, had I been in any right frame of mind, would have me salivating to work with. Viktor would think that he’d died and gone to Ripperdoc heaven. There were ten gray operating chairs with overhead screens and tools waiting to come down, arranged in a perfect line. All of which were empty with no patients… because of my presence.

Waiting to meet us were two highriders.

One was a tall, statuesque woman wearing a white skinsuit, with a traditional doctor’s overcoat hung off her shoulders. Her hair was short on the sides and long on the top, hanging in bangs over her forehead. The other was a familiar face, an older man with a severe white beard against his dark skin, wearing a vac suit with no helmet but seemingly ready to head out onto the surface.

“V?” the woman stepped forward with a pleasant smile.

I looked at her critically for a while, before playing what could be my last roll of the die.

I nodded and instructed my Agent to release my faceplate and metanthropic camo.

The pain was nigh overwhelming, but I bore it stoically as my natural features returned in full.

“Fascinating,” she breathed. “What will the surface dwellers think of next? I am Doctor Njeri, the chief of this clinic. Next to me is Manager Gakulu.”

I held out my hand to him, “Pleasure to meet you face to face, at last, Manager.”

He wearily raised an eyebrow but carefully shook it. “Greetings V.” His voice was naturally harsh and he nodded to me with respect. “Hopefully, we can both help each other. I’d normally speak more politician to you, but just one look at you tells me there isn’t time.” He turned to Njeri. “Is the clinic’s jamming still holding?”

“I already took care of the OA chair’s systems, utatomkhulu,” Alhaadi said with a respectful bow. “They think it’s still being ridden around in the tourist sector.”

“Good boy. Can you stand, V?”

“No.”

“Help her.”

Njeri and Alhaadi moved either side, grabbed me underneath the arms and lifted with grunts of effort.

I tried to help them, but my legs weren’t cooperating at all now and I was deposited into the ripper chair.

“Is everything ready?” I asked Gakulu.

“Yes, we are V.”

‘Butcher?’

The AI answered immediately, “Yes, I’ve already forked myself into the clinic’s systems and cyberspace. It’s adequate for our needs.”  He showed me live feeds of other rooms, one of which was holding my brand new Gemini body.

“Evaluation of the body?”

“Satisfactory.” The specs flowed in front of my vision and I especially focused on two critical points; the dedicated port for the most crucial piece of the puzzle, nestled in the neck and protected by as much flexi armor plating as possible and the blank brain grown from stem cells I had shipped in earlier.

“Well done, you’ve not only managed to recreate Relic 2.0 but improve on it.”

“The credit must naturally go to Doctor Njeri and her workgroup,” Gakulu nodded at the woman.

“With your bio scans, samples and full project documentation you gave us, I’d like to think we can do better in five months than some Arasaka scientist working under the stresses that a corp puts on its employees,” Njeri smirked. “But we’re still missing the final cog in this machine, we still have no way to transfer your engram. That would require Soulkiller.”

“Soulkiller is old news, Doctor,” I smirked. Every screen in the lab briefly flashed with blood red,  startling the highriders. My AI companion displayed his avatar in its full glory to them. “Meet my friend, Butcher.”

Now the shoe would be on the other foot. As I had been helplessly changed and overwritten by the Araska’s Relic 2.0 with Johnny Silverhand’s engram, now I would be in a new Relic 3.0 and take over my new Gemini body.

“Let’s begin.”

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* utatomkhulu - grandfather/elder in Highrider.

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A/N: And there is my solution to V's ultimate problem post 2077. She's been a busy bee these last six months after all. This won't tie everything up with a neat bow, and every action has consequences after all. Have a great weekend folks and stay awesome.