62 Odd bedfellows

January 2068

Pacifica, Night City

EBM Petrochem Stadium (under construction)

"Report," a curt voice that belonged to Colonel Kurt Hansen commanded. The Colonel was a large man of European descent, over one-hundred-and-eighty-five centimetres and was decked out in a modern stealth armour suit in drab black. He stood imposingly in a half-furnished conference room along with a handful of similarly dressed men and women. Most interestingly, however, was that there was no rank insignia on his combat uniform, nor was there the traditional marking of the NUSA flag on his shoulder. 

A woman coughed and said, "Sir, second battalion and the rest of the HQ elements are down. Pathfinder company that jumped in are engaging with some local criminal elements right now, with the assistance of a few local intel assets. A few were wounded, but no KIA yet. We're using the stadium field for dustoff flight ops for casevac, and we should have the local area pacified shortly. No response from the city government or local constabulary as of yet."

Colonel Hansen glanced out of a window at more than a dozen heavy transport aerodynes and helicopters sitting in neat rows on the football pitch, "And why the fuck am I looking at almost an entire god-damned aviation battalion without my fucking soldiers on the wire guarding them with heavy weapons and AD? One fucking kamikaze swarm and we'd lose all those fucking assets. Major, you need to pull the stick out."

The woman shrugged, "Teams are in position, but the heavy weapons and man-portable air defence systems were considered a second priority by the CAB CO. We should have them within the hour, though. For now, I have shifted e-war specialists to the roof with their gear. We'll have a warning, and with luck, they'll be able to infiltrate and disable any drones spotted."

"For fucks sake," the Colonel growled, but he couldn't take it out on anyone here. It was some fucking asshole sticking their dick into his cheerios and fucking up his assault plan. He was borrowing the aviation assets from someone else, so they weren't technically in his chain of command. Suddenly, he grinned, "Major, find out when the last flight is going to leave. Make sure at least six of those AV-8s stay behind. I don't give a shit about their pilots, and they can go back with the rest. We have enough qualified pilots in our HQ element to operate them."

"Sir, the brigade CO will have kittens," she said warningly, "Plus, those birds are all obvious Army assets, with NUS ARMY stencilled on the side. The few AVs we got for this operation were purchased on the civilian market. We're supposed to be incognito, after all, sir, right?"

He waved a hand, "I don't give a fuck! We're not in the Army again until this op is done, and he doesn't even outrank me. He'll bitch to his CO, and I'll get it in the ass from mine, but they'll understand. They only gave us fucking four AVs for a battalion, and they're all fucking unarmed. Major, get it done, but don't let them get any warning. Otherwise, Colonel Buttfuck will shaft us somehow. Get some fucking spray paint to cover over the Army markings before we operate in the city with them. It's just supposed to be a figleaf, anyway. Everyone knows who we are, and we know that they know, and they know that we know that they know." He paused at the end as if the level of recursion there confused him for a moment, but then he nodded to himself.

"Yes, sir. Next item, we have an intel update on the situation on the ground, as well," she said. The Colonel made a 'get on with it' hand motion, which she nodded and pulled up an overhead map display, "There is a new player in the north of Pacifica. S-2 is waffling over their confidence rating whether it is a gang or a paramilitary group." The map highlighted an area of a few blocks centred on a ten-story building, "This is the Siren's Call Amusements, a braindance parlour."

The Colonel took in the situation rapidly and seemed annoyed, "You are the fucking S-2. You know I hate it when you talk in the third person. That's not in our planned AO, either—they will be 1 ID's problem. Why do I need to know about a new gang centred around one building?"

She nodded, "Anomalies. They don't appear to be acting like a traditional gang. The building was purchased by an unknown local party, so they aren't squatting like everyone else. Intel sources suggest that the same shell company purchased a half million Eurodollars worth of military surveillance and combat drones from two foreign Corps, two-thirds of which are still yet to be delivered. They hired a switched-on mercenary company for little more than keeping the peace around their building... Lastly, and this is the most suspicious--they are paying all of their bills, electric and net access, on time. Oh, and the entire gang consists of full-body cyborgs, and this is the leader."

A high-definition video played of an obvious Dragoon full-body replacement stepping out into a street, glancing at an approaching mob of rabble before the MG attached to its shoulder riddled every single one of them with bullets. Surprisingly, the Dragoon then conversed with a few armed men and then walked casually back down the street. The Colonel whistled appreciatively, "Don't see many of those fuckers anymore. How can that be the leader? Most Dragoons can barely fucking say their own name, much less think tactically, heavens forbid... logistically." The idea that a full-time Dragoon user would have the brain cells to pay their electricity bill was ridiculous. There were only a handful of men like that in the world.

"Unknown, sir. The red book has a Dragoon on the level of a feral guard dog—albeit a feral dog that can annihilate a full company if not taken seriously, so I was a bit curious, too," his subordinate replied, referencing the NUSA Army guidebook on expected threats and how to counter them.

He nodded, "Okay, good to know. Major, make sure at least two of those AVs we acquire have a full load-out of AGMs. Bonus points if they are the thermobaric ones. Just in case." 

The Colonel had a straightforward philosophy about what the most effective way to clear a building full of deadly Borgs was, and it usually involved guided 175mm artillery shells delivered from at least thirty klicks away. 

That wasn't going to be on the cards this time, so he would have to make do. He continued, "And start a new file on them. Gang, my ass. If they're paramilitary, who is funding them and to what end? Are they more fucking advisors from the far east? Hopefully, it won't be our fucking circus or our fucking monkeys, but it'll be my ass if they end up surprising the brass during the invasion." 

It was the Colonel's private opinion that the war would have been over a long time ago if not for a ridiculous number of scarily competent military advisors that the Free States had, who suspiciously always looked Slavic or Japanese. The fact that half the war material utilised by the Free States was foreign in origin was also a big clue.

"Alright, anything else?" he asked, finally.

She shrugged, "The ROWPUs and FKUs are being driven in for some ungodly reason. But I've already dispatched a platoon from Charlie company to meet them at the edge of the city. Otherwise, those drivers would be murdered and the precious cargo stolen."

The Colonel sighed. The mobile reverse osmosis water purification units and field kitchenery units were a priority if he didn't want a mutiny. Nobody knew if they could trust the water here, after all, and the food had always been questionable. Still, there were some kitchens available in the half-built stadium that they could use if worse came to worse.

"Fine. Now, let's be about it," he concluded the briefing.

---xxxxxx---

About The Same Time

Pacifica, Night City

Pacifica Serenity Bible Church

The woman who called herself Marie Antoinette returned to one of the headquarters of the movement. They had taken over a mostly built but abandoned church that had been intended to serve the spiritual needs of a resort that would never exist. The location was prime, located right over one of the district's main network access junctions.

There had never been a sermon spoken in this place, and in her opinion, it was a little ironic that they used a place of dead, sterile spirituality as a base—their own gods were dead, too, after all.

Another woman in a very similar form-fitting netrunner's one-piece met her amongst the pews.

"Well, you're still alive, Marie," another woman said affably, "We thought the worst when you dropped off the net, ya?"

Marie sighed and nodded. She wasn't precisely sent as a sacrificial offering, but she volunteered for the task, knowing it was possible she would never walk out of that building alive. She almost hadn't.

Even before she entered the building, she had noticed that the local subnet was locked down tight as a drum, with no exterior wireless access points activated at all. The jammers had taken her by surprise, and her first instinct was to hack the nearest available device to create a proxy via the building's hardwired connection. That had been a mistake, one that nearly killed her.

Thinking about the dangerous entity that had threatened her, Marie shook her head before saying, "I think we'll have to change our plan. If they're crazy, then it is like the fox, no?"

"Tell me more. I just finished a deep dive into their subnet after we lost contact. I managed to infiltrate beyond some rather tight security, but there wasn't really much to see, beyond a half dozen people playing Adam Online and Elflines," the woman said, sounding amused but also concerned, "All of their security systems and some of those large aerial drones we saw must not be connected directly to the net."

That wouldn't always stop a good runner like Brigette, but there wasn't a lot you could do if the goodies were on a separate air-gapped system, assuming you couldn't compromise a vending machine and then use that as a bridge for a direct wireless attack. Things were a lot more interconnected these days, but high-level net running against private subnets generally still required physical penetration or suborned access. 

Nobody was going to volunteer to sneak into that building. She hadn't even been brave enough to "accidentally" drop a battery-powered proxy bridge, which they might have been able to use once the jammers were deactivated. She had thought about it before but decided against it. She had barely even seen that giant monstrosity move before he had a sword of all fucking things to her throat.

Almost as startling was the quality and quantity of ICE protecting the giant Dragoon. When she had started hacking it, it had been a reflex, but she had followed through when she had realised what she was doing. The giant borg wasn't a surprise; they had been seeing him off and on for weeks. But his cyber warfare suit was. She had used a number of alleged IEC vulnerabilities. It had been decades since they had last been updated, so one would think that it would have worked, but it hadn't, which meant his firmware had been updated in a custom manner.

She took a breath while packaging up the BD she had scrolled through the whole encounter. She'd explain, then Brigette could watch her virtu. They might still be able to get some use out of this gang, but not how they originally planned.

---xxxxxx---

January 2068

Gallileo Cylinder

L-3, Terra-Luna System

I landed a straight punch on the chin of the second assailant, and with my enhanced strength, I shattered his jaw and rendered him unconscious. He froze in a classic fencer's pose that indicated a serious concussion, and the hypervelocity pistol in his hand dropped to the deck. I kicked it away and turned to the first guy who had attempted to momentarily distract me with a knife, but he had his hands up and yelled, "I didn't know about any guns! He just paid me to distract you."

Ah, this guy was smart then. I nodded slightly and walked over to pick up the pistol, never turning my back or letting myself get too far from the guy I was guarding. Already, local voluntary constables were rushing over. After all, the second guy had fired a gun, and it penetrated the bulkhead. There was a loud hissing as the atmosphere was escaping into the void. I handed the pistol to the first responding constable and went back to the guy I was being paid to guard. 

I had lived here long enough that this was fighting the immediate instinct to rush with a patch kit and stop the pressure emergency. We all liked to breathe up here, but a savvy assassin could use a double fake-out like that, so it was important to stick with my principal, even if I was a bit annoyed with him. This was supposed to be a simple job that I was using to get time to go to the Crystal Palace. In fact, we were leaving today.

While space wasn't entirely safe, it was a lot safer than most cities back on Earth. So crime, especially assassination attempts on foreign visitors, were quite rare. The guy I had laid out was a groundsider as well. I could tell from his clothes, especially his shoes. 

I helped my guy to his feet in time to be approached by one of the constables, still putting his official brassard around his arm. He said imperiously, in a thick Nigerian accent, "Woman! What's all this about then?"

I had no doubt that they had video surveillance, but still, I shrugged and pointed to the guy they were dragging away, "He tried to shoot this gentleman, who I was hired to guard. The local claims he was paid to distract me."

The man nodded, ejected the magazine on the pistol and held it up, shaking his head, "Full-metal jacket. Not even frangible, ja?" He glanced at the guy who had the knife and said, "Bill, take that guy back for questioning." He then made a humming noise and, with a Gallic shrug, said, "Okay, I don't need anything else." Justice up here was very simple, especially in this case.

I escorted the groundsider back to the hotel, and he asked, "What are they going to do with that fucker who almost shot me?"

I glanced at him sideways, "If he just had attempted to kill you with a knife, or maybe even if it was just frangible ammo... he'd have been fined. But he used armour-piercing ammunition inside the hab, causing a pressure emergency. He'll be deported. Immediately."

The man seemed shocked and offended, "Is that fucking all? I need to get his name so I can fix his wagon when he gets back planetside."

I shook my head wryly, "You misunderstand. He will be immediately deported and without the benefit of a pressure suit. We take breathing up here pretty serious-like."

Comprehension flashed on the man's face, and emotions quickly traversed from shocked, surprised, to gleeful. He nodded, satisfied and amused, "No long appeals process up here, eh?"

I shook my head. There were no prisons at all. If you violated the law, you were fined. If you couldn't pay the fine, you had the option of accepting what amounted to a period of indentured servitude, or they would ship you back to Earth. Except for a few crimes, like intentionally or through reckless negligence damaging the life support systems or causing a pressure emergency in public cubic—that was the death penalty. I said, amused, "Justice delayed is justice denied, and all that."

"What if an innocent man gets accused of a serious crime like that?" he asked, curious.

I shrugged, "The entire population of the hab, citizens anyway, vote on it. That voting is probably concluding right now, in real time. I'm not yet a citizen, though, so I can't participate. They disagree with the sentiment that it is better for ten guilty men to go free than for one innocent man to be punished. They feel that if seventy-five per cent of the population, at least those voting, believes you are guilty of a capital crime, even if you're innocent, you probably should be killed anyway, just to be safe." I was about to say that it was kind of like what happened to Socrates, but Hana wasn't as educated enough to make that kind of reference.

He looked thoughtful and nodded, "You're pretty good with a right hook. Worth the money I paid."

I shrugged, "Normally, I work construction. Outside, you know? But I was in the service. What can I say? It pays the air bill."

His footfalls faltered for a moment before he said, cautiously, "I didn't see any air bill itemised on the hotel receipt. With how seriously you lot seem to take air, I'm not sure I want to be in arrears..." he trailed off, and I laughed.

"Don't worry, tourists don't have to pay," I said after I stopped laughing. We got him checked out and met the freighter heading back to the Crystal Palace with time to spare. This particular spacecraft had more room than the last one I remember, and we each had a stateroom, even if they were tiny with fold-out everything.

The trip was just as long as I remembered last time being, but at least it was uneventful. I bid the man farewell at his next hotel, which was more like a resort, and he asked, "Interested in a contract extension all the way down to Chicago? I'll pay for your return trip, obviously."

I pretended to consider it but shook my head, "No. There are a few people who might take umbrage at my returning to the North American continent, even if it is briefly. Sorry!" I was using the grudge a certain cartel had against Hana as my excuse, but the truth was that I had an appointment with the best geneticist in the Crystal Palace, and I had no desire to delay it. The payment I was getting was a pittance, anyway, but I had to have a good reason to decline it, as Hana wasn't supposed to be rolling in the money. 

It was already going to be weird that I was seeing a geneticist, but at the same time, Hana had stolen a reasonably large amount of money. I'd be buying some mid-grade life extension at the same time just to give a plausible reason why I was there, although I didn't need it. The protectee took my turning him down with just a shrug and said, "Fair enough, I 'spose. I know a little bit about that myself, capiche?" He made a pinched-finger hand gesture and a terrible Italian accent.

"Something like that," I said, amused. If he was from Chicago, he probably wasn't lying, either. That was the mafia capital of America, these days after the Corps in New York cracked down hard on the mob. Without further adieu, I left him there and went directly to the clinic.

---xxxxxx---

January 2068

Pacifica, Night City

Subbasement, Saint Cog's Home for Unwanted Borgs

I used the Dragoon to lower the glowing crystal cube into the hole I had cut out of the foundation and dug another two metres into the floor using a simple snatch block pulley system. The thing didn't need power, so I could theoretically stash it anywhere. However, it needed some periodic maintenance on its bank of Haywire comm devices, so I couldn't just throw it into the Ocean. While that might work, considering I intended to do the maintenance with a small telepresence robot, I wasn't that comfortable with it being totally inaccessible. So, I was just going to bury it and make it mostly inaccessible.

The crystal supercomputer had a number of traditional data ports, including a data bus that provided power as well, so the bot could be charged by whatever power source the system drew from some unknown dimension.

I had fed a direct fibreoptic data connection down there as well, digging in from the outside at an angle so it wouldn't be obvious from the sub-basement floor. I could use the FTL coms for data, and in fact, I did. However, in the extreme event that all of my physical bodies died and this location was compromised, I would have issues cloning a new body. While the crystal supercomputer didn't need Tinker maintenance, somehow, the FTL comms did. If I didn't have a hardwired connection, then I'd eventually get disconnected from the net when the FTL systems broke.

Being aware and entombed into the ground with no way to connect out, well... that was something out of a horror film. So, I included a hardwired connection so I could, in that case, act like some kind of AI. I was sure I would have been able to eventually convince someone to help me if I had access to the net. The connection included a direct fibreoptic connection, as well as an omnidirectional high-gain antenna I placed on the roof. 

Plus, I also included several kilos of plastique explosive so I could self-terminate in the most extreme situations. My intuition told me that the crystal computer would work for ... many, many thousands of years. I didn't want to be aware but trapped for that long if absolutely everything went to shit. If I had no further bodies at all, I was sure I would be able to slow my perception of time so that a second felt like a year, like putting a computer into sleep mode, until someone dug me out... but just in case. I liked options, even if I didn't intend for any, much less all, of my current bodies to die.

I was almost done. I was here in person because neither the Dragoon nor the Arasaka robots had enough dexterity needed for some of this work, but he absolutely could mix concrete, so I just sat at one of the office chairs I brought down here and shifted my full awareness into it and got to work.

After I got the system in place, I lowered the steel lid. I had to provide a box for this thing to sit in. Otherwise, there would be no negative space for the little spiders to work and live in while inside, as I planned to fill this entire hole with dirt and concrete.

A few hours later, I was at a stopping point. The concrete needed to cure, and that would take a while, and then I'd need to sand it down so it looked, more or less, like the rest of the foundation. There was no reason to delay any longer. In fact, there was no reason not to have begun the upload earlier. I could have helped myself with the Dragoon, after all.

Sighing, I couldn't deny I was a bit more nervous this time. I had done the math, and my precious organic brains should be fine with the increased neural activity over the network, but this was still a lot different than just adding a new cloned brain.

Shaking my head, I decided not to think about it any more. I mentally triggered the upload process and sat there to wait. The FTL comms maxed out at about five hundred terabytes per second, as that was the limit for the tiny oscillators I used in their construction, so a full brain copy still took a reasonable amount of time. Like, a whole minute. There was a lot more data inside a person's brain than most people probably realised.

Once the upload was complete, the emulator started immediately, and a connection was established, causing me a brief wave of vertigo as I became more. 

I just sat there and basked in it for a moment, my entire network and all of my bodies going slack in response, just staring up at the ceiling of wherever they were. The feeling of initial synchronicity and expansion was kind of like floating and not at all unpleasant.

"That's... that's special," I said, sighing out in a relaxed way, bonelessly relaxing as I shifted my entire focus inwards.

This was similar, yet different than last time. I was probably the most knowledgeable about how the human brain worked on the planet, but I didn't even think I had totally replicated a brain in software. Yet, anyway. Not only did you have to simulate how all of the neurons worked in a simulation, but you also had to simulate how neurotransmitters and other neuromodulatory chemicals interacted with the brain and replicate that virtually. 

It was an incredibly difficult problem, and while I felt that I had succeeded in creating close to a ninety-eight to ninety-nine per cent flawless simulation, that couple per cent was exponentially harder to perfect. There were serious, serious diminishing returns in the attempt, too. 

Still, I thought my simulation was the best in the world. I didn't know for sure, but I suspected that the emulation software used to run Soulkilled Pseudo-Intelligences had less than a ninety per cent fidelity, which might explain why even the AIs with human origins had a reputation for being foreign and inscrutable.

However, fortunately, and due to the fact that I was a network that included three organic nodes, I was able to create a system that was recursively self-correcting, at least as far as how the simulation brain matched my existing ones. The longer I lived, the more perfect my brain simulation technology would get.

Still, I felt odd for a moment. I wouldn't say that I felt more dispassionate now, and I verified that the new part of me was feeling emotions correctly, but there was a change. For example, I didn't think my new "brain" could panic easily since that was a function of an adrenaline feedback loop, and while I did program it to simulate the initial effects, it didn't simulate a whole body, so a feedback loop might be impossible.

The self-correcting system might correct this over time, but it might not. It wasn't really a defect, I thought. Plus, it would have to see many instances of me panicking for the simple machine learning algorithms to come into play, and I didn't really do that much anyway. Hopefully I wouldn't start, either.

I tested both of the drones that I would be using, the Dragoon and one of the Arasaka robots, refitted with a telepresence control board. The latter was for use down here in the subbasement, for the most part. It would be my main technician if I needed to clone myself, and my Taylor body wasn't around for some reason. 

I wasn't sure what I was expecting since I already knew both worked... but at the same time, it did seem a little bit different controlling them using only the thread of awareness that was entirely digitised. I wasn't sure precisely how to describe the difference. Smoother, perhaps. 

This subbasement was my secret resurrection centre, and I would be the one doing the actual work if I had to create a clone--through robot hands, anyway. I had genetic samples of all three organic bodies, and I could fast-clone a new one at the correct maturation in just a couple of days. 

I only had two sets of modified cyberbrain systems in stock, though. Not only were they expensive and time-consuming to modify, but I didn't have the same credentials to easily buy them as Hasumi did, at least not yet. My surgical residency as Taylor would probably take a whole two years, so there were still long months of drudgery and scut work that I was still looking forward to.

I glanced at my HUD, pulled up the console I had installed on the crystal computer, and saw the "CPU" usage flicking between 0.005% and 0.01%. I could run hundreds of node instances of myself on that beast or possibly increase my sole instance's "framerate" by a thousand, but that would instantly fry my squishy brains unless I significantly changed my network topology. I could make the crystalline computer a hub, but I had intentionally decided against such a network design. 

I hadn't wanted any one node to be any more important than the other. However, perhaps it might be workable if my organic brains all had a failover mode. I'd have to think about it. I specifically avoided making decisions like this until I had already added it to my network, though. 

I was psychologically incapable of making a decision that would, in ways, benefit something that wasn't yet me over the rest of me that was. However, now that the crystalline computer was a part of me, I didn't feel so bad about possibly giving it a more central role. I didn't know, though. There were reasons why I had chosen the topology I had gone with.

Nodding, I let out a long breath that I had been holding in. It seemed like things were finally coming together.

That was, of course, when the alarms sounded. Kiwi called me a couple of seconds later. The alarm was keyed into a kludge-together system that ran the building's security systems as well as the few surveillance drones that I had been delivered. I was still waiting for both most of my drones as well as the actual battle management computer to be delivered.

I used a couple of seconds while I was answering the phone to look at the alert from the drones. It showed a fairly large group of well-armed people firing automatic weapons into the front of the largest apartment building that was inside the radius of my protection. It was also where Kiwi's men posted up most of the time and where they centralised patrols on my ongoing "law enforcement" contract.

It wasn't really law enforcement. It was more like shooting everyone that looked suspicious, but the people living around me considered it policing and highly approved of it. When there was no law at all, people were quick to hide behind the firm hand of a barely twenty-year-old girl pretending to be a warlord. Although, actually, wasn't I really a lot older than that? I had been living with a Kerenzikov for years, so I should get credit for my subjective lifespan, I figured.

Shaking my head, I answered the call while simultaneously sending a text message to Mr Shadow asking him to meet me upstairs. The sound of automatic weapons fire could be heard in the background of the call as Kiwi opened with, "A group of borged out fucks just opened up on the main housing block. I've got two people down, I think not dead, at least... hold on a second..." 

I saw text running down her eyes as she focused on something else, and then a moment later, in the overhead drone view, I saw one of the attackers freeze and then casually turn and shoot one of his friends in the back. That was amusing but didn't last long as one of the other attackers smashed him about the head and neck with a pipe. He seemed to realise that he had been controlled, as otherwise I imagined he would have just shot him.

I walked both my bodies up the stairs to meet with the old ninja man that I called Mr Shadow, as well as a few others who had heard the alerts. A couple of them started to glare at my Taylor body until they noticed who it was. We all were a bit prejudiced against regular humans here, but they tolerated Kiwi. The only exception was my Taylor body, since I provided more or less free cybernetics services to this group of maladjusted Borgs.

Just my periodic maintenance every other week reduced the daily psychoactive medication needed by the aggregate population in the building by four-fifths. They weren't all bunnies and rainbows here, but they were a lot more sane than they used to be.

"Boss, I'm pretty sure that the Voodoo Boys let these jokers through. This is a Maelstrom cell that had taken over part of South Pacifica. The Haitians had kept them bottled up until now..." Mr Shadow reported although he sounded very amused when saying "Boss."

Having both my bodies there was a bit to get used to. I wanted to sigh but realised that it would come out of my original body, so instead, I just had the Dragoon shake my head, then said, "We can worry about that after. Anyone else coming?"

It turned out that in addition to Mr Shadow, four other Borgs were coming. I didn't force anyone to fight here. Not even in defence of the building. Their psychological condition wasn't ready for that, if I wanted them to have some chance of actual recovery. Still, a lot were so used to fighting that them going cold turkey was just as bad, so I didn't stop them, either.

 As the group of Borgs left, I went into the clinic on the bottom floor as Taylor to wait. There might be some casualties. Well, there would be casualties, but there might be some on our side this time.

As the Dragoon, I eyed one of the volunteers as we all ran out of the building, "You're recently from 'Strom. You okay going against your former boys?" I didn't want him possibly questioning his loyalty during the fight.

The guy nodded rapidly, "I know these assholes. I need to come. Otherwise, you might let a couple of these guys go, or worse, invite them to be my neighbour." 

Ah. I wasn't sure if I liked that the Dragoon had a reputation as a softie, though. I was trying to go the other direction. We all ran really fast, and I had already lost sight of Mr Shadow. 

As we got closer, I activated my e-war system, causing white noise to be transmitted on many frequencies from my body. This was more intelligent than simple jamming, as I still would be able to transmit outside. It was carefully scheduled jamming. If I needed to transmit, e-war suite would allot me a period of a couple of milliseconds where I would be able to transmit on my desired frequency band.

It reduced the bandwidth I could use by a lot and increased latency due to the schedule, but it totally ruined both most incoming wireless hacking attempts and SmartGun locks.

"Stay within ten metres of me if you don't have SmartGun jamming yourself," I transmitted to each of them and got a thumbs up from everyone.

As we turned the corner, the e-war system briefly allowed my synthetic aperture radar system to irradiate the street, identifying targets. I was just doing this for thoroughness since I had a real-time optical feed from a drone that was loitering a few hundred metres in the air.

However, I was glad that I did. I transmitted to our group chat, highlighting four areas near the ongoing firefight, "Four stealthed enemies."

I attempted to select each of them as a target but frowned. They were jamming the SmartGun system as well. I supposed they would have had to. The Smart 12.7mm HMG on my shoulder was well known by now. It was the first weapon I used because it was so simple to mow down a group of enemies.

Still, that didn't make it useless. I targeted the area one of the stealthed guys was at and began sprinting, pulling the mental trigger. The machine gun was gyro-stabilised, so no matter how wild my movements were, the barrel stayed where I originally pointed it. 

I hosed down the general area with armour-piercing rounds and scored a hit while the rest of my men opened fire on the dozen or so people who were still firing into the building. My boys had them enfilade, and if it wasn't for these four stealthed ambushers, I would have thought they were dumb.

The three remaining ambushers began to drop stealth and level large weapons in my general direction. One of them never got the chance to point it, as Mr Shadow dropped on him from above. The same Mr Shadow somehow bypassed all my jamming to send me a message, "Those are home-on-jam RPGs. Recommend immediate EMCON."

My eyes widened, and I had about half a second to think about that, so I briefly increased the framerate of my mind running on my crystalline computer by about ten times. Over a long period, this would cause damage to my organic brain, but for a second or two at a time, it would be fine. I wouldn't lose synchronicity from a brief difference, although I might have to take a neural anti-inflammatory later, that would be all.

Those weapons certainly appeared to be RPGs. There were so many types of rocket-propelled grenades, and very few had any guidance whatsoever. It kind of defeated the purpose of the weapon as a super cheap, short-ranged anti-armour system to add expensive guidance electronics. 

But one of the guided heads was an anti-radiation one. It was mainly used to destroy SHORAD radar systems, but it would do a number on my body, too.

Right before they opened fire, I locked out and deactivated all radios on the Dragoon body and took cover behind a large panelled van. It was the only vehicle large enough that I could actually hide behind, even crouched. 

One of the rockets passed over my head and exploded when it struck the side of the building, while the other hit the car I was hiding behind and exploded there, showering me with dirt, chunks of road and small pieces of van.

I was safe behind the van, mostly. These weren't anti-armour systems, really. They were just normal high-explosive warheads with built-in fragmentation, ideal for wrecking a radar system, but they still would have ruined my day if even one of them hit me in the wrong spot.

Instead of peeking my head out, I used the orbiting drone to look for anything else that could threaten me. There wasn't, so I stood and immediately started firing my machine gun, hopping over the van and shifting myself into full battle mode. I only had about fifteen minutes of operation going full-tilt like this, but I didn't need more than two to finish these guys off.

I used the machine gun to keep their heads down while pulling out my Burya in one hand and sword in the other. I just leapt over their "cover", taking a few hits to my armour from their small arms while descending amongst them, blasting one guy's head off with the giant Soviet pistol while taking another's head off with my sword.

After that point, I had the Dragoon go wild, and it wasn't more than thirty seconds before the rest of the enemies were put down.

The Maelstrom guys didn't try to surrender, and they fought to the last man, which was a lot more unusual than you'd think.

One of the guys who came with me glanced at the spots where the hidden ambushers had been and said, "I think maybe they were trying to get you, boss."

Ah, I had a genius here. But he was right. They also knew enough that I used jamming in every battle if they chose guided anti-radiation rockets, too.

I called Kiwi and said, "I think it is clear. You guys can come out."

I walked over to the shot-up front of the building and met three people poking their heads out. One of them was Kiwi, along with one of her lieutenants.

Kiwi growled, trying to stop one of them from fussing at her as she had a wound to one of her arms and asked, "Status?"

"One KIA for sure, and three more that are 300," her lieutenant said in a Russian accent. The large Slavic man reminded me wistfully of my old friend whom I had to kill. He then glanced at her and said, "Make that four."

Kiwi swore and said, "We're evacuating the building for now. We'll return in a couple of hours, but I don't think their goal was to attack our charges anyway. Let's transport the wounded back to Saint Cog's." Then she glanced outside and widened her eyes, swearing again, "Fuck! Our van!"

Oops. Haha, that didn't have anything to do with me.

"Three more vans will be here in two minutes. All 'round defence until it gets here, then we go," she ordered, and her men saluted her sharply. I raised my eyebrows. She had come a long way, I thought, from the mostly amateur merc that I remembered doing jobs with.

"Herr Shadow," I called out and jumped as he was suddenly next to me. I tried to play that off and turned to tell him, "Please investigate this. This was a good ambush, but it wasn't enough."

He nodded. He had started affecting a slight German accent, which amused me, "Ja. Another group of Maelstrom were annihilated short of your territory. Quite short."

I had no idea how he knew these things when my aerial surveillance didn't see them. Still, I nodded, "So it was going to be a two-prong attack? Were they going to pincer us here or attack the base?"

"Base, probably. An ambush of a single target by two separately moving units..." He shook his head and continued, "It has too many moving parts and is the type of tactic you'd see in a film and not reality," he said with a shrug.

I didn't have that much military experience. I mean, I was acquiring right here and right now, but what he said made sense. A pincer attack was one of those things that sounded clever but ended up getting you defeated in detail.

Several vans were pulling up, and I asked him, "Who helped us out?"

Mr Shadow forwarded me a small clip that was clearly from a stationary surveillance camera. It showed a group of a dozen heavily armed Borgs jogging down the street.

Out of nowhere, a large green AV-48 swooped in and tore them, and the road to pieces with two large thirty-millimetre cannons. Just as quickly, the aircraft flew away and I paused on a still image of the side of the aerodyne.

It was obviously a NUSA Army aircraft. It still had the "NUS Army" stencilled on the side, except someone added in spray paint "NOT" right before it. As such, it said, "NOT NUS Army" on the side.

"That was clearly NOT a NUS Army aerodyne," I said wryly, "It says so right on the side, there."

Herr Shadow chuckled. It was like the engine on an old lawnmower. Once... twice, then continuously. It was the first time I had ever heard him laugh.