Arkadia
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Arkadia
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“Tango down,” Kyon-Tae reported. Ishida had been put down. Despite having two Old War body guards, her team had taken them down quickly and efficiently. Text book example on speed, surprise, and violence of action. Whatever combat experience they brought to the table didn’t stand a chance against a fast and hard hitting team.
“Alright Ramirez, head on down. Lot of hardware that we need to comb through if we want to find the shipping manifests.”
If she were to be frank though, she wouldn’t have wanted to fight them in a fair battle. Given the choice, especially with these people, she wanted every single advantage stacked in her favor. The last time she had to deal with these sorts of people ended up in several fairly expensive prosthetic replacements. Of course, on the government time.
Mission was over. Optic camouflage eats batteries. Might as well turn it off. No need to drain batteries at this point. The mission was o-
The right side of her face suddenly felt very warm. Her head snapped to the side. She could see fragments pass by her eyes in slow motion. As she dropped to the ground, her eyes caught sparkles of shattered glass from one of the windows that had yet to even hit the ground. Were they running overwatch this entire time? She had gotten careless.
All four hundred pounds of the combat rated prosthetic crumpled to the ground with a resounding and authoritative thud. It felt like someone was hammering an ice pick into her head, half an inch at a time. Her limbs continued to actuate, twitching as signals misfired all the way down her spinal cord.
“Confirmed.”
Ramirez waved the virtual display suite in front of him away, the tangerine lines of data fizzling out as the Baltimore docks came back into focus. The thick cord attached to his belt that secured him to the ledge of the building was pulled twice to confirm a firm hold, then Ramirez flew over the side with practiced precision. Padded grips at the sole of his machine legs bounced off the side of the building once before gravity brought him flying through the previously shattered window of the room his squad mates currently waited for him. Leon landed with one knee to the ground, weapon ready, right next to the collapsed body of his squad leader.
“Puta madre.”
The sub machine gun was tossed to his side as his fingers mechanized into tools to jack into Katie’s systems to try and stabilize her.
“If you can hear me, boss, try not to die. It would be inelegant to pass on in such a place.”
While data streamed through his optic nerve, his subsystems were pinging local networks for any cloaking gear. In an attempt to hide, whoever shot Katie had used a small jamming device in an attempt to remain invisible. To a trained operative however, that data blackhole was as good as a lighthouse pinpointing their location.
“Building directly across us, eight floor, marking his location, one of you be a dear and take care of it while I keep the boss lady from early retirement.”
As soon as the language was passed on to him verbally, a ping popped up on Cole’s HUD. He slid forward to the ledge, granules of broken glass shifting under him, and took aim at the shooter.
Sadly, at this range the time it would take to line up a solid headshot, let alone a neckshot, would give the shooter too much time to line up one of his own. Cole didn’t fancy his enhanced mental capacity ending up splattered all over a Yakuza boss’s office.
He took aim approximately, and let off bursts of fire, shattering the glass at the shooter’s location fully, and giving his optics package something to lock onto.
More suppressive fire was automatically adjusted by passive revisions systems and practiced, deadly intent. Cole kept firing and systems kept pinging hits.
As the shooter finally disappeared from view, Cole wasn’t sure whether or not he had killed him.
“Multiple hits, unconfirmed.”
Sai turned over some furniture to hide behind before taking a knee and taking out his reconnaissance minidrone from his rigging. Fitting in the palm of his hand, it unfolded to about the size of a large hornet. He placed it on the ground in front of him and began the Smartlink sync system.
“Syncing [BeeMini 1178] with [Guardian Dawn] Smartlink system, please wait.
Loading cyberprograms, please wait…
[S4UR0US All Seeing Eye] initializing…
camera feed initalizing…
AUDIO… OK
VIDEO… OK
VISUAL… OK
PROPULSION… OK
[BeeMini 1178] CHECK… OK”
Its propulsion system activated and it hovered in front of him. “Keep your eyes peeled and the other channels clear while I’m piloting the Bee,” Sai told everyone through internal comms as he laid himself flat on the floor facing the ceiling. He switched off a cybereye to focus on the Bee’s visual feed and made slight adjustments to improve visual quality as he controlled it around the furniture, out the destroyed windows and flew towards the building that was marked. Cautiously flying it across the skies it finally arrived at the targetted building and Sai directed the minidrone to hugg the wall as it approached the eighth floor area where the gunfire came from. The minidrone hovered and Sai began scanning through with the various visual and audio filters for anything out of place through the residue and debris before cautiously flying into the room.
“Scanning. Nothing yet,” he updates the team as he directs the minidrone into the room. The scan identifies a fluid and begins following the trail to an obviously disabled body. “Body found. Kill confirmed. As does the lack of face and torn up cyberbrain.”
Leon’s eyes shifted in a frantic pattern as data stormed across his eyes, sub-systems and core programs warning that life support was dangerously close to losing power and Katie would be a very expensive paper weight soon.
“I need an evacuation asap, Boss lady down, we need the medic here, not in the bird.”
Quick, sharp words.
“Repeat, Leo-1, Commander is down?”
“Confirmed.”
“What is her condition?”
“Stable, barely, but not for much longer, need evac asap.”
Adrenaline and performance enhancing drugs pumped through Leon’s veins, the 1s and 0s that flashed across his eyes crystal clear, something even an enhanced optical nerve on a civilian would have gone crazy trying to make sense of it. The stuff they gave field operatives was meant to keep the mind sharp and aggressive, but it gave Leon a clarity of mind, a focus he didn’t get anywhere else. To be a SCAR operative was his true calling. He would not lose the boss lady. This role and squad had given too much to him, he would not lose. The whirling of the heli-birds blades sounded distant, shortly after a medic team came crashing through the doors, taking Tae with them. Leon wasn’t sure if he did enough. Another mission accomplished.
Chapter 2: Juxtoposition
Militech Chief Engineer Ichihiro Masada has been found murdered in his luxury high rise apartment. Along with Masada-san’s death are his wife and only child, as well his security detail. Police on the scene have indicated that this was a successful assassination operation. It would appear that a team had entered through the window and quickly made work of both himself and the security detail. At this time, there are no leads.
Militech stock shares dropped by 7% at the announcement of Masada-sans murder. He was responsible for leading the design of the Raptor Drone, Militech’s bid to the Japanese government for their Loiter Munitions Contract. With his death, the fate of the program is unknown. In other related news, it would appear that Hephaestus Industries is now front and center to win the bid, as their stock prices have risen today by 4%.
Mark ran his hands through his blonde hair. Masada-san wasn’t the only engineer at Militech who had been offed this year. Previously, they had also lost one of their Design engineers to a mugging. The person in question didn’t make the news but those in the department had widely regarded him to be a key engineer on the program. And shortly thereafter, a professor who was working closely with Militech had fallen into a seemingly unrelated coma. Coincidence? Mark wasn’t one to buy it. In development program of maybe 40 people, losing a key engineer and your primary consultant? You’d feel that in the department. And now the Chief engineer? Maybe this was all just happenstance. But he’d still have to investigate it before making that conclusion.
The end of his cigarette lit up as he took a deep breath. He couldn’t really go to the chief editor with this. He’d need more evidence. Suddenly, a message popped up on his chat server.
<Mark, you see this footage? It’s pretty blurry but it looked like some chick got nailed hard in the face>
His interest was piqued. He sat back up and loaded the file.
<You know where this is from?>
<No Idea, it showed up on the underground. Someone’s probably just sniffing around some unsecure camera footage. But just wait, this chick goes fucking mad>
As he looked into the file, after getting struck in the face, the body gets back up and goes straight into berserk mode. The figure left the camera angle, but the entire floor flashed bright and blood splattered across the windows.
<I’m not sure what to make of this footage. You think it’s from what just got reported on the news today?>
<Could be one of a thousand murders in this city>
“You’re lucky, your helmet saved you from most of the damage. We had to replace some of the dermal plating on your face. C4 to C7 needed to get replaced, disks, spacers, and all. They were causing shorts in the spinal column but you should be good now. That said, we fixed you up fine.”
The Cybertech continued to look down the clipboard. Still Kyon-Tae felt a little bit fuzzy. Depersonalization sensations? Maybe? Was she concussed? Cyberbrains were supposed to be fairly resilient to concussions. Though how resilient could you be from getting shot in the face.
“How about my head? Everything ok? I’m not feeling that well…connected maybe.”
“You should be fine. I can run through your diagnostics again but everything checked out green earlier. Maybe speak with the psychologist? You might be undergoing emotional duress.
Kyon-Tae couldn’t help but feel insulted. Three hundred direct action combat missions over a seven year period and they wanted to get her screened for PTSD? She had been injured before, though admittedly never enough to really knock her out of the fight to a major degree.
“The drug hookups, did you check what was going on with that? Before going in they said I was having issues with the injections.”
“Yep, we flushed it out with solvent. It was fine. The gate was just stuck. Anyways you’re on a 30 day hold from combat missions while we keep track of your vitals. But looking at your chart you’ll probably have no problems after 30 days.”
All things considered, she was in tip top shape. She could jump tomorrow if called up. But there was still the nagging feeling of disassociation between her body and her head. Much of the details from the previous missions were fuzzy as well. Maybe this was just the effects of having your bell run by a rifle round. Still, she had never experienced the fuzzy feeling after getting injured.
“Hey, what happened after I got shot?”
Without looking up, the cybertech replied.
“I assume someone exfiled you out. I don’t get mission details. I’m supposed to tell you that you have mission debrief after your checkup.”
Kyon-Tae walked into the briefing room where her three teammates turned around to her. Much of her memory was fuzzy through the duration of the entire operation. Getting shot in the face probably wasn’t the best regarding memory retention.
“Alright folks, I’m not dead so as far as I’m concerned, I’m still leading the team. Around the table, lets go through what we recall from the op.”
“Clean op, clean breach, clean everything.”
Cole narrows his eyes.
“But it was… So easy. Like someone wanted a shot at you.”
He gestures to his superior.
“Think about it. We land on the roof, easy. Set up jamming. Easy. Rappel to target. Easy. Hell, they didn’t even fucking look at us, KT. They just let us put them down.”
Nanoseconds pass before enhanced mental capacity makes another connection.
“That whole op feels like it was a setup to get us in a nice little killbox in the side of a highrise. But any shooter with any experience would know not to come at us without at least some heavy plates between them and the bullets. Why was I able to put him down with a couple bursts from my Classic?”
“Ramirez called out exfil once we got you stable.” He chimed while putting out a bud.
“Nah, maybe I’m overthinking it.” Sai said as he took drag from a freshly lit cigarette he took out during his statement. “But the Bee should be enough for entire op. It got the whole thing and it’s with the techs now.”
“Wouldn’t hurt to swift through the radio traffic in the area of the time of the op too.” Sai said as way to support Cole’s suspicion. “Not saying something doesn’t feel right, but doesn’t hurt give it the once over.”
“I’m also putting in a formal request for access to the autopsy. I wanna know for sure why someone came out to take shots without the gear to catch some.”
Cole looked over his shoulder, before leaning in close so that only his fellow team members could hear.
“And just in case, I’d like to make a more personal request that this discussion doesn’t leave this room.”
Better safe than sorry.
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