The Tsuna unlatched his belt. “Do you think this will be a trap?”
“It’s hard to say,” he admitted as he released his own belt and stood. “I would say that it isn’t. I don’t see a reason why they would want to hurt us and there isn’t a grudge. Admittedly, we left them to deal with any fallout after we took care of the EX-10, but that was merely the business of being mercs in that situation. They had more leeway as ‘hired’ security for the company.”
“I wasn’t there, obviously, but considering that Rok seemed pleasant around you, I don’t think he would try to lead you to danger.” Genos put his helmet on as they entered the bay together.
Kaiden picked up Debonair, folded the grip against the barrel, and placed it into a compartment on the underside of his gauntlet. His blade was in the same position on the opposite arm and both allowed for quick access to them should he need it. “I don’t think so either but unfortunately, too many people are really good at keeping their intentions hidden.” He snickered as he pressed the button to open the side door. “I also might be good at psyching myself out at the worst times.”
“I see.” The Tsuna paused to check his gauntlet. When he clenched his fist and pumped it, electrodes protruded from the knuckles and sparked. He repeated the motion and they collapsed. “If you are, it’s because you are being cautious.”
“Do you think so?” he muttered as he turned to close the door behind them.
“I do, and I think it is good. You worry for the sake of the safety of others,” Genos explained as the two began to stride down the hill into the empty town and toward the lit building. “We may be different lifeforms, but I think that is a universal mindset for a leader.”
“I’m glad I can live up to it.” He released a deep sigh. “It’s kind of stressful, though.”
His companion chuckled beside him and nodded. “That is also universal, I think.”
The two friends pushed the doors to the building open and immediately encountered a couple of dozen gang members who stared at them. There seemed to be more members in the red and orange reminiscent of fire for the Riders but a few wore the sky-blue colors of the Kings as well.
Kaiden paused and looked around. “Are your captains around?” he asked when no one seemed inclined to speak to them.
“You’re punctual. I like that.” Desmond’s voice rang out and he strode down a flight of stairs dressed in a dark shirt—a little too tight for his large frame—and dark blue pants. He reached the foot of the stairs and leaned against the railing. “I wish you had been as punctual at Ramses.”
The ace raised his hands and shrugged. “You can’t really put that on me. We were shot out of the sky before we even reached the location.”
“And yet you still made it anyway,” the man recalled. “I don’t think I ever had the chance to thank you and your friends properly. You made a hell of a difference back then.” His gaze drifted to Genos and focused on the infuser barely visible around the neck of his helmet. “Wait, speak of the devil—is that Jaxon?”
Kaiden shook his head and thumbed at Genos as he opened his mouth to respond, but the Tsuna stepped forward. “I am his kin, Genos Aronnax, I apologize that I could not join both you and him on that night, I was…dealing with some unpleasantness.”
“Kin, huh? As in sibling or cousin?” Desmond asked.
“A little of both but also not really,” Kaiden summarized with little clarity. “To be honest, their whole clan system still confuses me.”
The gang captain laughed. “Well, either way, your kin is a hell of a fighter. I owe him one too.”
“Is Zena here?”
The Skyway Kings leader nodded and pointed up the stairs. “Yeah, she’s helping with inventory. Did Rok tell you we are preparing to go on another mission?”
“Yeah, but you were still willing to hear me out. Thanks for sparing the time.”
He raised a hand casually. “No problem. Like I said, we owed you one.”
A quick glance at the various members of the gangs confirmed that while some talked amongst themselves, others continued to stare at the visitors. “I thought the Ramses mission was a one-time thing. Do you and the Riders work together regularly?”
“On the big jobs yeah,” Desmond replied. “We don’t have much back up here. Most of the Fire Riders are based in the Midwest and the Kings on the East Coast. Hell, I don’t think we would have a chapter here if it weren’t for some member getting a wild hair up his ass a few decades ago and deciding to start a chapter because he thought it would ‘expand influence.’” He made air quotes to finish his statement. “I wonder if the big chapters even officially recognize us. We hardly use the aerial gear the Kings are known for. We have a few real ballbusters in our group but unfortunately, we have three times as many who only think they are badasses when they are actually dumba—” At a crash in a room off to the left, Desmond stiffened and turned. “Dammit, Kars, I swear to Christ if you broke another jetpack, I’ll jam a Zeppelin down your throat and activate it!”
Kaiden snickered along with several other members. Another set of footsteps on the stairs announced Zena, who sauntered down dressed in an orange top that matched her hololenses and white pants. “Kaiden, it’s good to see you again.” She greeted him with a grin.
“Same here, Zena,” he replied as he shook her hand. “I left kind of in a hurry. What did Rok tell you?”
“Not much, only that you wanted to talk about a job. What had me interested was how he said it,” she admitted and folded her arms as Desmond returned from where he’d gone to check on his clumsy teammates and now joined them again. “He was serious and almost grim. Whatever you talked about seems to have shaken him.”
“That wasn’t my intention.” He sighed. “I told him I have a job that requires a large team of guys. It’s basically a raid on what is best described as a fortress, even though the details still need to be worked out.”
“What kind of raid?” the other man asked. “And against who?”
“Kind?” The ace considered that carefully. “Honestly, I’m fine with total destruction.”
“Damn,” one of the gang members muttered and Zena quieted them with a sharp glance.
“As for who, that’s kind of tricky. But let’s go with a mutual enemy.”
“Mutual how?” she asked.
Kaiden retrieved his tablet. “Well, for one thing, they were the ones who sic’d EX-10 on Ramses,” he revealed and showed a document on the tablet to the two leaders. “That’s something for both of you. But for the Riders, they also brought the killer Gin Sonny to Earth, who killed Lazar.”
Zena pursed her lips, her expression cold. “Is that right? I wish I could take a shot at him still, but I suppose I could settle for them.”
“I did not know him myself,” Genos stated and placed a hand on his chest. “But from Rok’s reaction and yours, I can tell he is missed. My condolences.”
“Thanks, but we prefer action if someone hurts one of our own,” she stated and her eyes looked over her lenses at the members around her. “But, as much as I would like to accept on only the grounds of causing these guys a little misery, I have to think about all my guys. I’m sure most who were at Ramses want some revenge for those lost, but we’ve had a fairly large number of new recruits and transfers in the months since and need to build our stocks up. Unless you have the creds to match our current gig, I’m gonna have to decline for now.”
“Same here.” Desmond sighed and handed the tablet back.
“I’m almost certain I can’t match it in credits,” Kaiden admitted and opened a new file on the tablet. “But I can maybe balance that in loot.”
“You wanna raid a pirate fortress or something?” the other man joked.
“The place I want to attack is full of new tech, expensive materials, weapons, armor, the works.” He flipped the tablet around to display a number of pictures as proof. “We’re only interested in data—info about this group—so you can have anything you can carry wi
th you.”
Zena and Desmond scanned the images. He definitely had an excited smile and while Zena was more neutral, she gave a nod of approval. “It’s more of a pain than getting paid upfront, but if it has a haul like this, we could not only re-outfit but sell the extras.”
“We’d get way more credits that way too. Hell, we’d probably use most of the credits we’d get from this job to get weapons and all that, but probably ones that aren’t as good as these.” The gang leader glanced at the woman and took another look at the pictures. “I can’t even figure out what some of them are.”
“Some seem to be modified or updated models of Sovereign guns,” Kaiden said and indicated two images specifically. “Others seem to be handmade, something you won’t find on the market.”
“Not even the black market,” Zena agreed as she studied the remaining pictures. “What do you think this will cost us? In mortal terms.”
“That all depends on your boys and girls,” the ace replied and gestured behind him. “I have some elites joining us and maybe some high-level weapons available, but they seem to have a mostly droid force, and they’ve been building it up for some time. It’ll all be down to how much damage we can do and how quickly.”
“Pure brute force?” Desmond asked.
“I have…a couple of hackers,” he replied. “They can probably help out but that’ll take time to set up. Until they can get into the systems, brute force will probably be the majority of the battle.”
Zena and Desmond looked at each other. “Between the two of us, we have a little over two-hundred members we can call in,” she revealed. “We can certainly provide arms and power, but that’ll wear out against a droid onslaught after too long.”
“I’m sure we have a few who dabble in hacking. But most work in cracking, which isn’t really practical on a large scale,” her gang comrade noted.
Kaiden nodded and wished he had brought Chiyo. She might have had a better understanding of what cracking versus hacking might add to their advantage. “Yeah. My guess is that this fight will be won or lost in a day. We don’t really want to hold out that long, even if we can. They would probably simply call in reinforcements. We aren’t really trying to destroy them completely—although it would be a pleasure if we could—but rather to send a message.”
“We’ll try to stall the guys who gave us our current gig,” Zena promised, added her number into the tablet’s directory, and handed it to him. “We’re interested, but I would like a little reassurance that we actually have a chance to stop the droids rather than simply whittle them down while others are built.”
Desmond nodded. “I have some contacts who could possibly help. But they don’t run very cheap.”
“It’s fine.” The ace stowed the tablet carefully. “I have an idea of my own.”
“Really? It sounds like you’ve thought ahead.” The other man sounded enthusiastic.
Zena tilted her head and regarded him warily. “You don’t look that confident or excited, though.”
Kaiden threw his hands up and spun to head to the doors. Genos hurried to catch up. “Unlike you, I’m not so sure these guys will be excited to help—or even to see me.”
“Do you need help?” Desmond asked. “You’re right—I’m actually excited about this raid. If you need help—”
“It’s okay.” He waved to stop a possible protest. “It would probably only make it worse, actually. The Halos like to keep to themselves.”
Zena and Desmond looked at each other in surprise. “The Azure Halos?” he asked in a strangled tone.
Chapter Eleven
Chiyo held back the feelings of nausea and pain. She focused on the lights, numbers, and commands around her and they gradually grounded her. In today’s training, she’d managed eleven minutes but could go longer. Cyra, who casually adjusted a literal data stream, floated in a swirling mass of lights. The student infiltrator should have been able to see what her colleague was writing. The experience shouldn’t be so intense.
“Are you all right, Chi?” the woman asked in concern when she realized her companion was under strain.
“I should be…” She sighed and drew another slow breath. “This is…much more intense than I thought it would be.”
“I’m surprised.” Cyra floated to her and place a hand on her shoulder. “When we interfaced with the Animus system last year and tried to help Kaiden, you seemed so calm. Up until the very end, too, like it didn’t affect you at all.”
“I think Chief helped with that at the time,” she explained and changed her position from cross-legged to lean back and drift rather than hover. “When I use the technician suite, it’s usually only to transfer control and move the device like it is my own body.”
“That only works on certain machines, I’m afraid,” the other woman reasoned and floated along with her fellow hacker. “For the complicated stuff, we have to be able to interact with it directly—let our minds form something more tangible and believable so we can manipulate it personally.”
Chiyo tried to adjust her responses based on what her colleague had said. Modernist cubes of varying sizes representing functions or files filled the area and littered what could be considered the ground. The glowing streams of data in various colors were occasionally interspersed with orbs that indicated security programs. She returned her focus to her companion. “This is what our minds consider believable?”
Cyra giggled. “More believe than merely a landscape of binary. We may be smart but we’re not quantum computers.”
“It looks fascinating…” She made another study of their surroundings and located the horizon as it ebbed between white and a light-blue color. “I assume this is because our EIs are trying to make it simple so as to not use too much power.”
“One of the reasons is that they are focused on making sure our minds don’t melt away.”
“That would be an issue.” Chiyo straightened when she thought she felt a dull pain nudging at her mind. “Fourteen minutes. I’ll make it to twenty.”
“Don’t strain yourself,” the woman warned. “That fact that you made it to ten is already incredible. I wasn’t able to do that until a few years after I left the Academy.”
“We need every advantage we can have,” she reasoned and spun to face her. “Even if we are able to stop the droids, there are internal defenses and back-up systems. Not only that, we want to be able to find as much information as we can before Kaiden does what he inevitably does.”
Cyra chuckled. “Can’t rein in your boyfriend yet?”
“Boy—” she whispered before she simply smiled. “I don’t wish to. I think playing it safe would only make it more likely for him to mess up.”
“Fair point.”
A bright flash between them startled both infiltrators, who immediately tensed. A female figure appeared and her body rippled through several shades. “Good morning, technicians.”
“Aurora?” Cyra lowered her arms that she had used to shield her eyes. “Is the professor looking for me?”
Laurie’s EI nodded. “Both of you, in fact.”
Chiyo frowned. “Can’t you simply inform us? I wish to finish my current training.”
Aurora smiled. “You are quite diligent, miss Chiyo, but to show you the files he wishes to share would disrupt the current connection rather drastically. I can appear here with little problem as I interface with your EIs directly and am therefore not seen as a ‘new’ item. Should I try to link with a whole new system while you are still here… Well, I understand it can be quite painful for those using the technician’s suite when sudden changes occur from outside the system.”
“It’s not really a headache you can take care of with some aspirin,” Cyra confirmed.
Chiyo sighed but nodded. “We’ll be there soon,” she promised. Laurie’s EI nodded and vanished. The infiltrator took a deep breath and glanced at her companion, who nodded and closed her eyes. She did so as well, and when she opened them, she was back in the Animus pod.
“Good morning, ladies,” Laurie greeted cheerfully as the two women entered his office.
“Good morning, Professor,” Chiyo responded. “Aurora notified us about some new information you wish to pass along.”
He nodded. “Well, I suppose it’s not exactly ‘new.’ More like confirmed. She was able to finally break into several locked files that we had a hell of a time opening.”
“The assassin was able to use security you had difficulty circumventing?” she inquired, obviously surprised.
“We don’t think it was her,” Cyra interjected. “We think that among everything she personally recorded and wrote down, she was able to steal a few files here and there but never had a chance to open them.”
“Honestly, I would be shocked if she could,” the professor stated. “It’s a rather devious little system often called the Enigma Spiral. It locks certain passways when—”
“I am familiar with the system, Professor,” Chiyo interrupted and caught herself quickly. “I’m sorry. I still feel a little…ill from the interfacing.”
He smirked. “I can certainly understand. I really want to make a breakthrough with that, but neurobiology is not one of my strong suits. Artificial minds are much more fascinating to me—and not as big a problem when they break.”
“Within reason,” Cyra muttered. She placed a hand on her hip and looked at the professor. “What did you want to inform us about, sir?”
Laurie placed an EI pad on the table and turned it to display a hologram of a large, square building surrounded by what seemed to be a garrison with a few dozen smaller buildings and storage units. “We’re still sifting through everything, but we may have a better understanding of the fortress Kaiden wishes to attack,” he revealed and pointed to the main building. “It appears similar to the factory you infiltrated a few months back. This one seems to be designed for autonomous creation, for the most part, but we did find a file with a few dozen names so there may be some kind of overseer group.”
Raid (Animus Book 9) Page 6