by M. D. Cooper
Austin didn’t like surprises, and he didn’t like this particular kind of surprise.
The doors grumbled open, halves sliding back from the middle to reveal a number of things that caused Austin concern.
First: the room was a barracks. No other word for it. There were bunks. There was a big screen set off towards the rear where some has-been sportsball of some sort was playing (Austin didn’t follow those kinds of things; he was almost certain it was sportsball, but it could just as easily been a cooking show. He just didn’t keep pace with non-interactive entertainment). There was—completing the image—a set of underwear (used) adorning the side of a bunk. All of that was definitely surprising, but it wasn’t the kind of surprise that was bad, in and of itself. No, what made it bad was the second thing.
Second: soldiers. This being a barracks, a natural path of thought led you to expecting soldiers, so a few of them were going to be on the cards. But heavily armed and armored, and ready for them, was not on Austin’s concert schedule for the evening. If you played it through your head, yeah, you’d work out that them being ready was probably likely, what with the noise of gunfire and—no doubt—a bunch of comms across the link from other Reed soldiers, wet and currently unable to gain access to a facility that they believed they controlled. In the shoes of the exterior soldiers, Austin would have given a friendly heads-up to the team on the inside. It’s just that the schematics said something different. It was sloppy, it was messy, and if Austin was in charge he would have fired whichever asshole hadn’t kept the schematics up to date.
So as those big doors opened, revealing five soldiers, full combat armor, weapons, and a will to use them, Austin thought to himself: well, it was a good run. The soldiers had the drop on them, plain and simple.
Austin hadn’t factored in just how well he’d motivated his people. Sometimes true leadership paid rewards well after the fact, and this was one of those times. Leck was already wading in like these fuckers were in the way to an open bar. He peeled off to the left of the doorway, covering Olivia with his mass, his sledge tossed in an overarm throw at a Reed soldier. The hammer hit the man right in the chest, picking him up off the ground and tossing him back. Austin would have winced if he’d had the time. You could have all the bionics in the world, but a big guy could still run you over and leave you bleeding out like last week’s roadkill. Austin’s overtime fell in around him, his Glock coming up like it had a mind of its own, but—for the first time ever—he felt just a little too slow. Ruby Page was already on the dance floor, having gone right when Leck went left, and she was doing a mix of ballet, street beat, and gunplay. Her SMGs were blazing fire into the guards, one pointed low at knees, one raised high for headshots, working them left to right like long distance scythes.
There was a spray of blood from the home team as Ruby’s two targets got pulled apart like cheap piñatas. And also like cheap piñatas, nothing of value came out of the bodies, just a bunch of gore, chunks of meat and the odd bit of metal, and a lot of screaming. Although that last was brief, at least.
Leck, for his part, was in a spot of trouble. He’d raised his assault rifle, firing it like he remembered how it was supposed to work, but not really scoring a lot of hits. For his trouble he got shot in the hip, stomach, and chest. Austin’s take was that all his bionics were about physical strength, and he wouldn’t have been sporting the kind of autotargeting tech that made Ruby such an effective asset in this fight. Well, not everyone was good at everything. Austin had to remind himself of this. His own faults were obvious. He knew he had a tendency to reward people too much, and he also felt that he didn’t go far enough with teaching those who could benefit from his experience.
Time to remedy that.
The guard shooting Leck was side-on to Austin, having pivoted to follow the other man’s charge, which made targeting a more varied proposition. Austin liked to do things just-so, and having a side-on target places a little more variability into the situation. Still, you worked with what you had, and what Austin had was a gold-plated Glock loaded with high explosive armor piercing rounds, and that was probably going to work out okay. The Glock’s front camera lined up the guard who’d shot Leck, mapped the target in wireframe, and then hammered out five shots. Temple. Jaw. Throat. Ribcage. Miss (miss!). And then—afterwards Austin might have agreed it was a lucky shot—torso shot to a kidney. Everything after the temple shot was just for show, but Austin came from the school of excessive enforcement. Better to waste bullets than time, right? Rounds punctured the soldier, the bullets shedding their hardened exteriors as they penetrated armor. As they burrowed further they blossomed into fire, resulting in the guard jerking with micro explosions from each hit. His head burst like a dropped watermelon, and his torso ruptured with a couple of over-large cavities.
By Austin’s count, that was four down, one to go. His eyes moved through the treacle of overtime to see a guard drawing down on Olivia. Olivia, who was crouched by the door’s panel. Olivia, who was running a deck. Olivia, without whom they were all severely fucked.
He needn’t have worried.
The shotgun Olivia held blossomed with fire, picking up the guard and tossing him back, the armor of his chest plate torn into fragments. Whatever was packed in the shotgun shells wasn’t for hunting deer.
After the brief fight, Austin watched smoke curl from the muzzle of the Glock. He said, “How we doing?”
“Ready to rock,” said Ruby Page.
“Fucker’s got me, but you know, nothing like the time that clown dropped a loading press on me. I mean, that was bad,” said Leck.
“I think this gun is cool,” said Olivia. “Can I keep it?”
“You can keep it,” he said. “Feel free. Be my guest.” Austin pressed forward into the barracks, stepping over pieces of Reed employee and discarded takeout containers. The room had just one other exit, which was on the schematics. Behind that was a long corridor. At the end of the long corridor was an actual posted guard station, and behind that? Pure gravy. The lab.
The bleeding from Leck’s wounds was already slowing, his internal bionics staunching the flow. Say what you will about the manual laboring cadre, but some of their tech was great at keeping a body alive. A man who didn’t bleed to death might be back on the clock tomorrow. In the syndicates, that wasn’t a hardship. That was a promotion opportunity. It was all about the incentives.
• • •
Before they headed into what Austin was sure what a corridor of death, Leck held up a hand. “This shit feel easy to you?”
Ruby snorted. “You’re bleeding, Lancelot. There is red stuff coming out of your meat bag.”
“Yeah, I get you,” said Leck, rubbing at the hole in his shoulder like it was an itch that needed scratching. Austin figured it might feel a bit weird too as internal systems clamped down on arteries that would otherwise gush life-giving fluids all over Reed’s otherwise well-carpeted floors. Nothing like the floors back at the lair. Another thing to improve when the money situation wasn’t so tight. “It’s just, you know. Top secret facility.”
“And just five guys,” said Olivia. She was looking down at one of the bodies. “Well, five humans. This one’s female.”
“There isn’t enough OEM homo sapiens left inside those bodies to construct a five year old child,” said Austin. “It might look female, but that kind of surgery can be done over the weekend. Hell, a decent clinic would see you converted and back on the street in under twenty four hours.”
“Twenty four hours?” said Leck. “What about the sutures?”
“You’re not going to be doing construction work after they’ve returned your dick in a box as a souvenir,” said Ruby. “Why, you want to get a little work done?”
“Me? No,” said Leck. He frowned. “Still. All this feels… easy.”
“I agree,” said Austin. “There are only five… persons here, and while I’d like to believe that Reed is managed by incompetents and morons, this facility should be run with a more
military hand.”
“Incompetents?” said Olivia. “They own the interactive entertainment market, even after that little spin in Seattle.”
“They fired me,” said Austin. Some people. “We’re here to… encourage a wider set of learning opportunities from past mistakes.”
“Got you,” said Ruby, spinning one of her SMGs by the trigger guard around one of her fingers. “Learning. But let’s get back to easy.”
“There should be no less than one hundred people here,” said Austin, “unless they don’t value the Decider.” Which boggled the mind: how could you not value a thing that could change minds? It made Marketing’s job easy to the point of banality. Was all this some kind of elaborate trap? A ruse? But what would be gained by luring Austin here? It’d take a lot of planning to set Kerry up with the schematics for the place and the codes to get Austin in. The only thing they’d gain would be access to Austin’s lair, with its off-brand porn.
“Well. Let’s hope it stays easy,” said Leck. “Still. I figure after that encounter… well, I’m feeling exposed.” He wandered up to one of the walls, then started working it over with his sledge. After a good series of hits, the metal of the wall buckled and popped free. “Here we go.”
“A shield?” said Ruby. “Quaint.”
“You say ‘quaint,’ but I say ‘cost-effective insurance,’” said Leck. He hefted the section of wall. “Also, it makes me feel better.”
“Being prepared, I like it,” said Olivia. “Let me get a link into the local net. I should be able to be a little more useful if I don’t have to use a hard link to doors.” She got to work. In five minutes, they were ready to move out.
• • •
The corridor leading to the guard station was white, well-lit, and free from surprises. This was a good thing. At the end of it was a sealed metal door, and above the door was a camera. The camera was housed in an armored surround, meaning from Austin’s point of view that this was a kill trough. You didn’t armor a camera on the inside of your facility unless you factored in a bunch of people getting shot. When someone came out of the sealed metal door, it wouldn’t be a surprise: it would be exactly according to plan. “Stay lively,” he said.
“I get you,” said Ruby, edging forward, side-on. She was taking step after carful step, one SMG leading the way ahead, one pointed back the way they came. Her head moved like it was on a swivel. Austin respected that; the SMGs would have a hard link through her hands, cams in the weapons providing a view of where they were pointed right into her overlay. Despite that, the human animal that lived inside all of them wanted to look with its own eyes, as if that made things better. Ruby’s eyes might have been better, at that. Austin didn’t see what make they were; definitely bionics, but without a telltale brand. It’s possible she was ex-military; they tended to scrub identifiers from… equipment. Regardless, she seemed by far the most competent of his motley crew, ignoring Austin himself. Acknowledge excellence and move on.
Leck was walking a step or two behind her, hunching behind his section of wall. Austin had figured the man for a take-charge kind of guy, but being shot three times did tend to alter your world view. At least he was still doing the work.
And then there was Olivia, her human-normal eyes wide as saucers, trying to take in all the light around them as she looked for the next threat. Her deck was slung behind her, the shotgun gripped in both hands. Austin wished she’d had a little more live-fire experience, but you went to war with the army you had, didn’t you?
They made it about half-way down the corridor—a distance of twenty meters, no more—and the big door at the other end started to open. Austin’s lips quirked into a half-smile. Exactly how I would have done it too. Make sure your ‘prey’ is caught between two exits, the farthest point from safety they can be, then spring your trap.
Through the door stepped… well, okay now, that was a bit of a surprise. The Reed soldier that stepped through was a total conversion, solid metal framing looking like a humanoid robot. It was a surprise because Reed didn’t have the necessary technology—or they hadn’t—to make one of those. They had a few in the lab, fractured experiments that didn’t work entirely well. Austin had heard rumors about a new type of synthetic body Reed were working on, but that had been before Seattle, and well before he was ousted from the syndicate. No, this was military, and hard line in approach. Which meant effective, because held in the TC’s hands was a rotary cannon. Six barrels. Large calibre—Austin’s overlay filled with details like .50 caliber and anti vehicle weapon—before he could blink.
Inside the TC was a human mind, or what was left of one. There would be some meat under the metal. A brain would be connected to the silicon. This wasn’t a machine piloted by a human; it was a machine that thought it was a human. It would act as fast, or faster, than a human. It would take a lot of pounding before it went down. It was possible that Reed had borrowed this from Metatech, or had stolen the tech from someone. All of that was largely incidental, because with the TC moving on them they were all going to die. After the cannon fired, they would die quickly, leaving nothing but red slurry and a few pieces of metal in the corridor.
Austin let the overtime wash over him, some stutters firing through his nerves—he’d used it a little too much, a little too often today. It wouldn’t be reliable without a couple days’ rest. He wasn’t an augmented enforcer like that clown Moody. He’d got the work done to help out with… internal negotiations. It worked fine for a few encounters against normals, but here? He was wondering if he might have overreached. Still. He’d done preparation of his own before coming out. He told the Glock to eject the current magazine and chambered round. The magazine started make its slow fall to the floor through the molasses of overtime while he pulled a new mag from his belt, sliding it home. The Glock chatted to him over the hard link as it slotted a round into the breach, reading the idents from the bullet. His overlay confirmed the loading: DPU. While taking on a TC was suicide, Austin wasn’t the kind of man who was going down without a fight. He was going to fire depleted uranium through this motherfucker, and while it might not put the thing down, it would leave a hell of a repair bill.
Although Austin would be much happier if it put the thing down.
Ruby opened a link to him, her body already on the move. “I need a distraction.” All business, no coyness, nothing in there to suggest he was the boss. She was escalating a problem to management, and he was the wide receiver for that option. She, like Austin, had overtime enabled.
“Leck,” said Austin in the real, the word feeling thick, half-chewed as he made his mouth move through the overtime. He made sure he said it loud, but it was hard to tell if he’d made any sense; he hadn’t had enough practice at talking in the real with overtime enabled.
“MOTHERFUCKER!” screamed Leck, who didn’t appear overly concerned with the clarity of the message. The man charged forward with his discount-aisle shield. It drew the TC’s eye, and that big rotary cannon started to turn, life breathed into a nascent system. The TC would be running overtime as well, but it had chosen a weapon that had a two second spin up time. It would have been smarter to choose a straight rifle, but this encounter was going to be a learning experience for everyone concerned. Austin kicked off a timer in the top of his overlay. In two seconds, the weapon would fire, and anything in front of it would be turned into chum.
0.10 seconds: Ruby began her sprint towards the TC, her SMGs starting to rise.
0.20 seconds: Austin raised his Glock, overlay mapping the TC for likely weak points. It didn’t give him a lot of options; the point of these suckers was not being weak.
0.30 seconds: Olivia looked like she might have been starting to respond to the situation. Like Leck, she wasn’t running an overtime module, which made her likely to respond in what would feel like an hour’s time.
0.40 seconds: Ruby had made it three meters further. Her RUBY SMG started to fire, first of the shells tumbling in slow motion from the breach.
0.50 seconds: Austin’s Glock made it to level. He might have had an overtime module, but most of him was still original fitment meat. There were no cybernetics in his arms to make them move faster or punch stronger. Later, he might get something done about that, if there was a later. For now? He lined up the leading elbow joint of the TC, and squeezed the trigger.
0.60 seconds: The Glock’s breach ejected the spent shell. His optics were still mapping an impact point on the elbow. No time to wait; Austin moved his sidearm further up the TC’s form.
0.70 seconds: rounds from Ruby’s SMG were impacting against the TC’s armored head. No effect on target. The PAGE SMG had joined the conversation. She had traversed another three meters. Four bullets from the RUBY SMG had impacted with the TC without obvious effect. Austin’s overlay helpfully noted her likely fire rate was around 600 rounds per minute.
0.80 seconds: the TC’s rotary cannon was engaging shells into the firing system, ready to start spitting brass at them. Or tungsten. Or whatever else it was loaded with.
0.90 seconds: new target for the Glock. Austin lined the weapon up with the TC’s shoulder, squeezing the trigger again. The overlay reported that his first round had done damage to the TC’s elbow, a straight-through shot that left a glowing circle of superheated metal in its wake.
1.00 seconds: we made it to a second! Don’t celebrate too soon. Impact on the shoulder from the Glock. Ruby was nearing the half-way point to the TC.
1.10 seconds: Austin’s overlay predicted—a set of predicted firing lines mapped over his vision—that the rotary cannon would fire at Leck. That would be a bad situation for Leck, because the man was holding a piece of wall, not a piece of armor. Austin selected a new target. What about the throat? Throats were generally good, although the TC probably didn’t breathe through that anymore.