He hit the ground running, knowing that every second counted in the firefight Yu was in. The two grenades that went off in the street did an admirable job putting a haze in the air and had set one of the Knight Errant vehicles ablaze with a wonderfully smoky fire. Rude didn’t even have to pause for a better opportunity to cross the street, ducking slightly to make sure he stayed in the thickest of the shroud.
His luck continued. When the Knights had breached the building, they’d blasted the ground floor doors nearly off their hinges, leaving the entrance open enough that he barely had to slow down as he crossed into the downstairs lobby. Once inside, luck was no longer a factor—it was time for skill to shine.
The lobby was sectioned into roughly three parts: the stair landing, the front desk/waiting room, and the back hallway that likely led to the rest of the first floor. Burned cordite filled the air with its tangy odor, and the strobing muzzle flares from weapons fire flashed all around the landing.
Two of the three agents Rude saw enter the building were at the foot of the stairs, firing short bursts from their shortened assault rifles up into the corridor above. They took alternating turns spraying bullets into the empty space, checking their own ammo supplies to reload accordingly, and taking cover from return fire. It was an excellent coordinated effort. The third Knight, the ork, was nowhere to be seen, and Rude assumed he must’ve gone up to make it a close quarters fight.
Military training. Maybe Ops. Rude was actually a little envious of a well-oiled team like this, really something you rarely saw in corporate security. They’re just doin’ their jobs, he mentally sighed, leave enough of ’em for the Doc Wagon to patch back up.
“Ya’ll should’ve taken the day off,” he drew both his sword and the Predator, the first blast from the latter catching one of the human Knights in the shoulder. Their thick armor padding stopped the round from penetrating, but the impact nearly spun him one hundred and eighty degrees.
“Secondary target! Floor one!” the other agent shouted into her helmet microphone loud enough that Rude heard it in stereo—once from her lips and once coming up from the knot of wiring under his coat collar. She swiveled her weapon and spat a burst toward the troll barreling down on her. Sadly, it wasn’t the first time Rude had taken a few Knight Errant rounds.
“Frag!” he shouted when the first AP round speared right through his armor—both worn and natural. A squirt of hot red blood spurted out of his bicep, the pain cutting through chemical compensation. It was everything for him to maintain his grip on his pistol. That was not standard KE munitions, the burning in his arm kept throbbing angrily, but Rude wasn’t about to let it slow him down. He just needed to change his plan of attack to compensate.
He slid to a stop, grinding broken glass and bullet casings into the glossy tile floor under his boots. Using some of that momentum, he swung his leg forward into a lobby chair formerly bolted to the floor. Like the kicker for the Seahawks he sent the furniture careening across the room toward her. Rude could see the shock in her human face disappear into the growing reflection of the chair in her visor right before it collided with her upper body and exploded into chunks of metal, plastic, and faux-wood. The impact knocked her on her back, flat on the landing with a lung-emptying “Oof!”
Having only the Knight Errant he had first shot as a momentarily active threat, Rude tried to put a few more bullets into his more armored sections. They weren’t likely to kill him outright, but they’d put him down for sure. Rude’s arm was more wounded than he’d first thought, putting a terrible tremor in his aim, and the shots bucked wild. Not wild enough to miss the Knight altogether, but enough to miss what Rude was trying to hit. Instead of simply doubling him over with easily patched up tissue damage, the bullets slammed into the fist clutching his rifle. In a cloud of red mist and flying bits of black glove, his hand disappeared and was replaced with a ragged, gushing stump. He fell to his knees and mumbled incoherently in shock, his other hand trying in vain to pull the ribbons of meat together again.
“Aw hell.” Rude was upset. His aim was off from the injury, and he actually didn’t want to kill these guys—but seeing a soldier fall apart like that was too much for him to handle.
He’d want it this way. He crossed the distance in a few strides, holstering his currently unreliable sidearm. His sword flashed forward, nearly taking the Knight’s head clean off. Rude looked down his extended sword arm, his eyes lingering for a moment on the fresh blood spatter dotting his cyberlimb, and he wondered for a moment if something similar happened to his hand, when it was still flesh and bone.
“Claymore, no!” The woman agent had apparently caught her breath. She rolled over to her knees and screamed dramatically at her dead teammate. So much for military discipline, Rude judged her emotional outcry, but it added to her resolve. Her rifle had fallen from her fingers when the chair hit her, but she wasn’t out of the fight.
“Altered vehicle approaching—” the radio eavesdropped into Rude’s ear, “unexpected tertiary target. Bug out, now!”
“No way,” the Knight Errant stood up, plucked off her helmet and tossed it aside. Her face was a scowl of hatred, and she wasn’t about to obey those commands. “You killed Claymore, you trog bastard! I’m gonna enjoy this,” she hissed. Two sets of shining cyberspur blades ripped out of her gloves, clenched fists shaking with rage.
When she pounced like a predatory cat, Rude almost felt bad for her. She had lost someone obviously important to her, and now this. He was going to let her live, maybe just break a few important bones so he could get back to making sure Yu was okay, but now that she’d made it about his race? He just couldn’t be bothered to hold back.
Her anger made her sloppy, and she overextended her attack. Her arms thrust forward, blades trying to find him, but he sidestepped her completely and brought the heel of his metal hand down hard on her lower back. The resounding crunch was replaced immediately by the squelch of her body getting trapped between the crushing force of his pressed attack and the unforgiving marble stair landing. Looking down at his grisly handiwork, Rude assumed she might live for a few more minutes, but he didn’t have time to spare her a second stroke.
“Another one?” He did notice the white-feathered serpent tattoo on the back of her exposed neck again. Something was definitely strange about these guys, and it made Rude seriously wonder if they were KE street agents at all. What have ya’ll got me into?
The ding of the elevator in the back of the lobby grabbed Rude’s attention. The doors slid open, revealing that third Knight Errant he was missing—the ork he believed was probably calling the shots. Under one arm he had tucked a bulky satchel, while the other lifted a beat-up machine pistol tipped with a savage-looking bayonet.
“Druik pokk nongh!” Or’zet profanity always made Rude smile whenever he heard it because it was so grossly literal about what you should do to combine parts of your own body. This ork’s words were no different, spawning a chuckle from the troll as he turned to flee out the back. Over his shoulder he let the machine pistol belch lead wildly into the lobby, generally at Rude, who plunged his sword down into the now very dead woman at his feet and lifted her up in the path of any shots that might have randomly found him. The ork shouldered his way through the emergency exit, the noise of the klaxon alarms replacing the popping machine pistol fire.
The whine of rotors outside came in through the open door, joined by the hum of a fast engine and the rattle of automatic gunfire. Rude took a moment to look over his shoulder and saw Emu’s ride drift sideways onto the scene, her two support drones opening up down the street. Backup’s here, he thought as he looked back at the slowly closing back door. Rude swung his meat-shield off his sword, slid his blade into the scabbard on his back, and followed the fleeing ork out into the rear lot. Time to tie up loose ends.
As soon as he emerged into the night air, warning klaxons inside the building blending noisily in with the emergency sirens outside. There was so much gunfire echoing from the st
reet in front of the building, Rude didn’t hear the lower caliber pops of the ork’s machine pistol. Plastic splinters showered the side of his face as the rounds stitched up the doorframe next to him, one barely grazing the edge of his horn.
Rude turned to face his attacker, currently using a parked Econocar as cover, and narrowed his cybereyes with a look that said, “Oh no you didn’t…”
“Oh drek,” the Knight knew he had one good chance to get the jump on a monster like Rude, and he had just fragged it bad. Once more the agent scrambled on his heels and moved to flee.
“Not this time,” Rude growled, reaching into his coat’s pocket. Damn, that really hurts, he thought as his wound flexed to grab the small oval within. Ignoring the growing ache, he thumbed the activator to “impact” and hurled the Flash-pak across the lot.
Most people are trained to toss grenades of any kind in a wide, parabolic arc in order to avoid obstacles and potential scatter-causing impacts while maximizing area of effect. Rude was not like most people. He whipped that grenade side-arm like a college ball player looking to make the major leagues.
The Flash-pak punched through the Econocar’s passenger side window like a bullet. Even though it was set to detonate on impact, there was still a fraction of a second’s worth of delay. A muffled whump followed by the crash of broken glass blasted out of the car as the grenade went off. Used for nonlethal incapacitations, Flash-paks generate a tremendous amount of light and sound in a large radius carried on a short lived, powerful concussive wave. Within a confined space—the driving compartment of a compact car, for example—the pressure is multiplied dramatically.
Shards of glass sliced outward in all directions, cutting a thousand tiny slices into the ork’s uniform and exposed skin. Little wounds like that were annoying to a toughed up meta like him, but the shockwave of force that followed was another story. The Econocar’s plastic shell and alloy frame could not hope to contain the doubled-and-re-doubled blast. The hinge buckled, opening the driver’s side door into the Knight’s center mass with nearly as much force as what Rude himself could managed with a kick.
He flew backward onto the asphalt, ribs broken and lungs burning for fresh air. The machine pistol flew from his grip and, more interestingly to Rude, his underarm satchel took the brunt of his fall. Its flap rolled open and an assortment of broken tech components, sparks, and other smoking bits of metal or wire spilled out to join the shards of window glass. Like looking at the fragments of a shattered vase, Rude could tell the parts were once whole, but he had no idea what that could’ve been.
“Targ…et,” the ork on the ground started to groan, and Rude heard it from his collar. He picked up the pace for a few strides to plant his boot onto the Knight’s chest. He didn’t even have to put on any pressure; between the broken rib and half-a-troll’s weight, his lungs squeezed to a third capacity.
The ork wriggled under his boot, and Rude saw yet another of those white-feathered serpent tattoos on the back side of his lumpy head.
Yu’s signature blinked in his HUD.
Rude knelt down, careful not to give the ork too much freedom. He straddled him, planting one knee onto each arm and pressing the rest of his weight on his midsection. Anti-ballistic plating aside, having a troll sitting on you is not only undignified—it is a remarkable handicap.
Rude’s reached back and slowly produced the shining combat knife from his boot, thankful he didn’t have to move his arm that much. Each twist or pull sent fire throughout his right side. What the hell did she hit me with?
“You…you know how it is, chum,” the ork coughed out the words and twisted his face into a forced smile that did nothing to hide his panic, “’runners gotta…run. Just a job…”
Just a job. He’d heard that before. Hell, he’d said that before. It was definitely not something some corporate agent would say. This ork, no matter how he was dressed, was not a Knight Errant. None of them were. This was a mission team, and like it or not, Yu’s warehouse meet up was the target.
<—where no one will think to look for us. Either that, or we scatter to the winds to wait for this to blow over and take our chances.> Yu’s text continued to scroll through Rude’s vision, but he only really paid attention to those last few words.
“Fuck that,” Rude’s talk-to-text suite on the Sony translated it for him. He wanted the ork to hear what he was about to say. “They wanna hit us, I say we hit ’em harder.” He grabbed the fake agent’s chin—more like the lower half of his head, really—in the fingers of his cyberhand to hold him still. The ork’s pleading smile contorted around his tusks and he let out an indecipherable slur. Rude lowered the knife slowly as he spoke, the tip lightly touching the chromed lens of his captive’s augmented eye with a barely audible click. “Just tell me where to start shootin’. I think I know just where to start lookin’ too.”
A sound that could be mistaken for words drooled out of the ork’s restricted mouth, his eyes blinking deep and deliberate, and his hands tapping out his submittal on the pavement.
“Yeah,” Rude pulled the knife away and held it up like a finger against his lips in a shhh gesture, “ya’ll hit me up tomorrow.” His mechanical strength effortlessly turned the ork’s head to one side, exposing that tattoo more clearly. “I’ve got a lead.”
“I knew it…” the ork grunted angrily, “I told Spotlyte the Renraku hit…was gonna be a fraggin’ bloodbath…!”
>Rude? Who was that? What are you doi—>
Rude flipped off his comms. “Keep talkin’.” He relaxed his grip so the ork could continue, “and I might let ya’ll live. Who’re ya with? Who hired ya’ll to kill my shelf’s elf?”
“Serpent Squad,” he admitted, “Runners out of Renton. That’s all I can give you. You know how it goes.”
“Yeah, I hear ya.” Rude sighed, pressing the knife’s edge just above where that tattoo started, “but we both know ya got more to give…”
“Hez ain’t been ’round yet,” the bartender, a smarmy-looking goblin with a face like a lost dog fight and a prosthetic ear two sizes too big, stretched his neck up to look Rude in the eyes. “Buys y’rself a drink, a dance, or a private. I don’ care, just get t’steppin’ on somethin’, hightower. Ye’r spookin’ the ladies!”
Horneez Gentlemeta’s Club was a favorite hangout in Renton for those metahumans that really stretched the limits to the “human” part of that nomenclature. It was one of the only places where, if you had the nuyen, you could have a drink with a half-shaven sasquatch, get a lap dance from a centaur, or—as Rude was hoping—get the dirt on a nasty piece of work that had nearly gotten one of his teammates killed.
“One of those,” Rude pointed his finger at the dark brown lager disappearing down another patron’s gullet. He checked off the AR swipe, his eyes going wide for a moment when he saw nineteen nuyen vanish from his account, and jerked the glass out of the goblin’s hand. The bartender stood there for a moment, the green “add tip” flashcode blinking in the air be
tween them. Rude smiled his favorite “screw you” smile, and turned away toward the main body of the club.
Horneez was pretty busy tonight. People from all walks of street-level life danced, caroused, drank, and seemed to be committing a variety of other activities in the flashing lights and sickly-sweet vanilla scented fog machine exhaust. Three different stages lifted a beautiful elven woman, a perfectly sculpted ork male, and a heavily animalized modified human that seemed to be more feline than either male or female above the crowd. They danced with great skill to use their bodies seductively and suggestively to the intensely loud music flooding the entire building. Glowing payment receivers blinking in the AR around their stage platforms allowed patrons to tip the entertainers of their choice, possibly opening up alternate “option tabs” for additional services closer to the end of each dancer’s set.
Maybe if I had the extra nuyen, watching the gyration sync up with the beat of the music, he lifted his pint in three fingers and took a sip, thankful for the numbing chems in the slap patch on his arm. Even so, Rude rubbed the cold throb in his bicep, pulling his hand away and looking at the thin crimson film on his thumbprint.
“Hoy oy, chum.” A familiar voice broke through the bassline, half a laugh in his tone. “Might wanna get that checked out, mate.”
Hez was small for an ork, but nearly every inch of his exposed skin—and even more that wasn’t—was covered with tattoo work. He was a living gallery of arts varying from jailhouse tats done with ink and a razor, watercolor-styled paintings that look like they stepped out of the Nu Louvre, and bio-luminescent patterns engineered from some deep-sea beast. “Inna spot o’ trouble, are ye, Rude boy? What cannae help ye wit’, and what does’t pay?”
Hez was a ranking member of the Skraacha, a group of metas from the Ork Underground that took it upon themselves to play night watchmen, and one of the only magically-inclined people Rude trusted—mostly.
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