October 2022 Side Story: The Run pt. 2

Hi everyone! 

Here's the other half of last month's story. I'm going to stick to shorter outlines in the future. Even though part 1 technically met obligations, I felt like finishing it and hopefully will also not fall too far behind on actual SoW writing for the week...

Almost 7000 words is definitely up there for side story length!

Anywhoozle, poll for this month ends in an hour or so if you see this and haven't voted. If it's a tie, I pick between the winners!

Oh, and chapter in a couple hours since final editing for it is next on the hit list for tonight.

“That went better than expected,” Angel mumbled from her spot next to me cramped in the back of the van.

“’Course it did!” Bard turned to us from the front passenger seat and replied with a smile that quickly twisted down. “Wait—what did ya expect?”

Angel heaved a sigh and tried to stretch, elbowing me in the rib. “I expected we’d fail to get the van in at all, and I really didn’t think the ‘come back later with the rest of the parts’ trick would work at all.”

“It was their fault for having the gate check be wireless,” Saint said from the driver’s seat with no small hint of pride. “Now all we have to do is get from the loading dock inside without getting caught.”

“And then find Lorelei and then find the data and then copy the data and then brick the server,” I grumbled.

“What’s got your panties in a twist, Wrath?” Bard asked with far too much glee.

“You’ve shoved a me into a partially-hidden compartment designed to hold, at maximum, someone of Hyper’s size.

“Woulda worked if ya’d let us take your arms off!” Bard laughed.

I growled in reply.

“I just wish we could go faster!” Hyper complained, driving the van from their spot across the van. Their voice was muffled, hidden as they were inside a false tool shelf.

““Quiet,”” both Saint and Angel whispered. Saint added a “please.”

We all mumbled, but shut up. Our guise was an HVAC repair crew. With all its hydroponics, the place used some specialty parts, and Sharp had found they were about due for their next service anyway. A bit of records digging, and we had a halfway convincing copy of the service van from the company they usually used—if their service van had been left sitting outside for ten years.

The idea was to not get seen by anyone important. Standard camera spoofs in the right spots, and some thrown-together uniforms would hopefully get us in and out fast enough to avoid being caught. I had my doubts—not a lot of oni in the metroplex, so I’d stand out. At least my fairly bulky arms weren’t chromed out and I’d probably spent more time than any of us watching and reading about HVAC on the matrix the past week.

Did I need to do any of that? No. Was I anxious and had nothing else to do because my job is “get us out if it goes sideways?” Yes.

The van pulled in slowly. Saint and Bard hopped out and fiddled around back, Saint grabbing his half-disguised deck, until they gave me and Angel the all clear. I took one small drone and stashed it in a pocket. Another went with Saint and Bard.

Angel and I set off to find our target, while the other two headed for the server room. Hyper could keep us all in touch via the drones. The big one with guns was still inside the van—just in case.

The loading dock was drab gray concrete, and they continued that wonderful theme inside. Worse yet, nothing had clear labels or directions or a map of the big complex. Sure, you don’t want the help poking around, but do you want them getting lost?

Angel and I saw a late weekend worker and tipped our hats down to show the logo, aiming to walk quickly by.

“Where are you going?” the guy asked us, sounding more frustrated than suspicious.

“HVAC servicing,” I replied in the easiest tone I could muster. “Isn’t the AHU this way?” I flicked a thumb in the direction we were headed.

The guy relaxed and shook his head. “No. Right at the last hallway.” He pointed behind us.

I tried to reference my mental map of the place, but it was fuzzy.

“Is it? Thanks.” Angel replied with a very convincing fake smile. “Corps always have to make things confusing, right?”

“Maybe to you,” the guy scoffed, then turned and hurried away.

After a headcheck at the nearby camera, Angel flipped him off.

“Is that the right way?” I whispered, walking toward where we were “supposed” to go.

“No,” Angel replied, then looked at the pocket where the drone was. “Any updates from the others?”

Hyper’s message popped up on my AR and I shook my head. “Still working at it.”

“Then we’ll go there for now,” Angel groused. “Good save with the ‘ACU’ thing. I don’t suppose you know how to actually service whatever it is if we meet anyone else?”

“Not a clue,” I replied honestly.

***

“Are you done yet?” Bard whispered impatiently.

Just like the last three times, Saint didn’t respond. His eyes flicked around and his fingers danced over the deck. Bard huffed and glanced around the storage closet they’d ended up in. Wires from the hole in the wall were spliced into Saint’s deck, sparking intermittently.

After another minute of agonizing boredom, the decker jacked out and stood up. “We have until they find the looped cameras,” he said hurriedly. “I could only get the ones on this floor of this wing. This place has some serious IC and I don’t like it.”

“Do your job better then!” Bard quipped.

“That’s not it,” Saint brushed off the jab. “What I mean is that there’s something else going on here—I just hope it’s not above our paygrade. No backing out now.”

Bard’s eyes lit up. “Oh? Good, this was getting boring.”

Saint flipped her off. “Server room’s in the basement. Stairs are the third door after the first right turn if you go left out of here. The door we want is at the end of the right hall once you get down there. It’s mostly storage, but I couldn’t find access for the room. There may be a closed circuit on the door.”

“Do you expect me to remember all that?”

“No. I expect you to swipe me a keycard from the security office on this floor. Two doors down on the right—we passed it earlier. I can get to the server room and see if I can get in on my own. Maybe find out what else they’re up to from here. We’ll meet back here, or I’ll send Hyper’s drone a map for you.”

“Aww, now that sounds like the fun part!”

“None of this should be fun.” Saint put an ear to the door. “It’s clear.”

Bard grew a Cheshire grin. “Jeez, no wonder you only do cold sim. I’d bet you’re real fun at parties, old man.”

“Can you get the keycard or not?” Saint hissed, hand on the doorhandle.

“Yeah, yeah.” Bard swiped a hand through the air dismissively. “I’ll go get it.”

Saint nodded and the two of them crept out into the hallway. Hyper’s drone followed Saint and relayed the conversation back to Wrath.

***

“We’ve got five minutes. This floor only,” I said as soon as I got Hyper message.

The two of us had found the AHU room and set some tools about to look like we were working in case anyone came in. I at least had the decency to check the filters. Still good, I reckoned, but it wasn’t like we actually had the right replacements.

“Then let’s hope Lorelei’s in her office,” Angel replied.

One tense hallway later, and the two of us arrived in front of a door with a keycard and the name “Dr. Tozell” on it. I knocked. No reply, but I heard movement. Angel stepped up and knocked, much louder than I had.

The muffled sound of a shrill angry voice approached the door from inside. “Markus, for the last time I am not going to—" A red-haired woman in her mid-thirties opened the door. “Who are you?”

“Ms. Tozell,” I nodded lightly. “We’re here to get you out.”

“What?” Lorelei replied with a dumbfounded look that quickly turned to anger, “the hell are you talking about?”

Uh oh.

***

Hyper was busy. The others had split up three ways and organizing everything was a pain. The missions with the fun drones were way, way more, well, fun. They watched Bard lay out the security officers in the watch room. Saint’d be mad about that if he ever found out, but it didn’t look like she killed them. She took a whole stack of keycards and slinked back out of the room.

Hyper sent the map Saint made over to her and the others. They’d panicked at the wireless jammers downstairs when they’d lost the drone, but calmed back don when Saint resurfaced, heading back to meet Bard.

If this mission didn’t have a person they needed to grab, they could’ve just melted through the lock and outrun the alarms. Thatwas the fun way. Oh well. Angel and Wrath were arguing with their target, so Hyper slipped the drone into the target’s office and took a peek around. Not much security on their computer. Unfortunately, except the open files, everything was remote access behind one heck of a firewall. Patrolling IC weren’t something Hyper wanted to try to deal with, especially with a surveillance drone.

Instead, they just copied what was open and sent it out. Saint and Bard would get it when they came back from the place with the signal jammer. Boring, boring.

***

Bard waited almost patiently while Saint found the correct keycard. Stupid probable alarms for unauthorized access. With an eyeroll she took up the rear and followed Saint inside. The server room was bigger than she’d expected, but still far too hot and cramped.

Bard looked up at the twin turrets positioned by the entrance and whistled. “Damn, with a hardware like that, I’m surprised a single keycard let us in.”

“I bypassed the biometric lock,” Saint replied, a hint of nervousness in his voice. “IC knows something’s up but they haven’t traced it and I’m not in the system right now. If those turrets start—”

“Yeah, yeah, they do anything, I shoot the turrets in the camera bit. I got it.”

Saint grumbled at her excited tone and got to work. The files were password protected, but he could crack them later (and try to avoid any data bombs inside). He had permission to copy at the card’s access level, so that’s what Saint did. He was almost done when the muffled bang of two silent pistol shots went off in his ear.

“Got ‘em!” Taava shouted gleefully.

Shit.

***

The conversation had stalled out, and an icy feeling was growing in the pit of my stomach.

“So you have no idea what we’re talking about?” Angel asked, exasperated and glancing at the camera that should still be looped. The timer on my vision said thirty-three seconds were left. Thirty-two.

“Yes. Now leave before I call security. I won’t be tempted by monetary offers.” Lorelei moved to slam the door, but I stuck my foot in it.

A file from Hyper flashed across my screen. A bunch of technical stuff I couldn’t understand: “Strain 2” would, with [some chemical I didn’t understand], and in conjunction with [magic jargon I’d ask Angel about later], could potentially “triple crop yield” in poor soil conditions.

“Lorelei,” I said quickly. “Your work is on improving crop yields, right?”

“Yes.” Her eyes narrowed. “And if you’ll excuse me…”

“Wait!” My shout caused Lorelei to turn. “Who do you think would try to poach you, then?”

“On my side now, trog?” She narrowed her eyes.

Twenty-four seconds. I let the slur slide. “Listen, like Angel said, we were told you wanted to come willingly. And—”

“We don’t like being tricked,” Angel cut in. “Who could want you?”

“Do you expect me to trust you?” Lorelei paused. Fifteen seconds.

“Can we talk inside?” I asked. Twelve seconds.

“No,” Lorelei replied. “Leave, and thank your employer for sabotaging his own plans to poach me.” Six seconds. My augmented hearing picked something up from far away.

***

Saint finished the file transfer just before the server locked him out. “Bard!” he shouted.

On it! Bard got the explosives out of her bag and set them up quickly. Above, the turrets sputtered and sparked, twin bullet holes right through their sensors. With their explosives lit, the two of them ran out of the room just in time for it to explode. A rush of hot air and the noise of a server cluster dying under plastic explosives and thermite tailed the two of them as they ran up and out.

With the explosion, the jammer winked out. Emergency lights lit up on all along the hallway and alarms sounded from the floor above. Saint sent a picture of the files out to Hyper to send to everyone: Strains one through seventeen. Strains of what, he didn’t have any time to find out.

Their response said they were moving to operate their combat drone. Bard’s gleeful smile contrasted heavily with Saint’s deep frown and worried expression as they ran upstairs for the van. The rest was up to Angel and Wrath, who hadn’t yet arrived.

***

Two seconds left and the alarms started. Lorelei darted back into her office.

Angel wrenched the door open. “Grab her!”

“What?” I replied, looking down the hall and expecting to see armed guards any moment.

“We’ll talk later. Grab and go!”

“No way! We were lied to!” Despite my words I moved closer to Lorelei, who drew a holdout from the desk. My own twin vibro swords were stuffed into the duffel bag I had on my back.

“Yeah, and we can return her later. We don’t know what kind of shit we’d get into for turning on the Johnson. You don’t do that.” Angel said, closing the office door behind us, slightly muting the sounds and red lights of the alarm.

Loud alarms like that were either for employee safety, or because they place had its own security. This was the latter, and it usually but not always meant we at least weren’t going to run into knight errant because whatever was going on here was illegal enough to want to stay undiscovered.

But tripling crop yield wasn’t illegal. Something was up. A gust of wind knocked Lorelei back as she fired, and the bullet glanced off one of my arms, tearing the synthskin but doing no damage. I saw an image from Hyper that Saint had taken. Strains one through seventeen.

“Hey Lorelei,” I asked, trying to remain calm. “Shouldn’t this alarm be silent?”

She glared at me confused.

“You know, to call knight errant and keep us here until we’re surrounded?” I heard footsteps approaching the office. Shit, the cameras had caught us, hadn’t they?

“Not… necessarily…”

Good, she’s listening.

Angel gave me a hard look and I mouthed back “I know what I’m doing.”

“What do you know about strains three through seventeen?” I asked, hopeful I was right.

“We only have six strains,” Lorelei responded, confused again.

I popped up a projection from my cybereyes of the file structure in AR. “Not according to this.”

“What!?” Lorelei grabbed a pair of glasses off the desk and glared at the image. Outside, the footsteps pounded closer. “Shit,” she whispered and tried to type on her own computer. “Server’s down.”

“Destroyed,” Angel supplied. “We have the files. All of them. Come with us and you’ll get to see these other strains and continue your work.”

“What!?” Lorelei shouted again. “How could you!?”

“Thermite and plastic explosives, that’s how,” Angel responded with forced calm. “Now come on.”

“Two seven nine eight one three five four,” Lorelei spat in a shaky voice. “That’s today’s encryption password. It resets in—she glanced at her computer’s clock—five minutes.”

No ‘ware, huh? Interesting.

“Hyper, you get that?” I said subvocally.

“A little busy!” I could hear gunfire in the background of their static-filled connection.

Outside the footsteps thundered right on past Lorelei’s office door. We’d lucked out. Those few seconds we were visible, no one had seen—yet.

I sent the password to Saint and confirmed I was sure it was legit. I wasn’t, but this was a gamble I’d take. A moment later, I got the files on my commlink. I projected the first page of “Strain 7” in AR.

Lorelei’s face turned hard. “Hell…”

“So?” Angel asked.

“Fine, you win. Let’s go.” Lorelei holstered her gun.

“What was ‘Strain 7?’” I asked.

“Reverse engineered from my own work. Bio warfare stuff, you wouldn’t understand.”

I huffed and picked Lorelei up. “This is faster. Do youunderstand?”

She got the message and shut up.

***

Corp facilities that don’t care about legality have a lot more freedom in choosing their security systems. Little things like “fire code” don’t matter to someone who won’t ever have a proper inspection done. So the series of lockdown doors I had to slice through in the hallway suddenly made a lot more sense.

Saint and Bard had somehow made it to the van, though the former had been shot in the shoulder. No gel rounds tonight for these security guards. I couldn’t move quite fast enough carrying Lorelei, which was a problem since the guards had no issues shooting at me even with her over my shoulder. I took shots to my chest and left arm, some breaking through my armor.

Angel threw the soldiers into disarray with sharp blasts of wind, and I bowled through them, cutting down the few who still got in my way. Still, more were coming, and they were better armed. Worse still was the pair of turrets that descended from the ceiling ahead of us.

“Shit!” I rolled, tucking Lorelei to my chest.

Angel threw herself down and into a roll aided by her magic.

Just as the barrels warmed up, a hose of heavy caliber rounds tore through both turrets. Hyper’s combat drone swung around the corner, bright blue and gold paintjob showing it as friendly. The three of us followed it out and to the van.

The loading dock had a gate down. “I’ll cut it!” I shouted. “Everyone else in the van!”

Twin swords out, I slashed a roughly van-shaped hole in the gate and threw myself to the side as a hail of gunfire that erupted through the new opening. Hyper’s turret drone sailed out after me, guns blazing. The van’s tires squealed and I jumped in as it tore past, shutting the doors behind me.

All of us hit the van floor, bullets pinging about as they tore into the old beater. I had to thank the shitbox’s cheap steel, because while Angel, myself and Bard all took grazing hits (and the windshield was completely obliterated) we made it to the gate.

“Hold on!” Saint yelled.

“Brace!” Angel screamed.

Taava laughed hysterically and I quietly held myself and the others to the floor of the van as we crashed through the metal barrier with a jolt and a deafening screech. And then…

We were clear. Whining, pulling to one side, and bent at the frame, the van soldiered on away into the night. The chase from security was intense, but brief. The artificial cherry on the soy cake of our luck was that we managed to find a place to hide out from the knight errant attention our exit had caused.

“Can we take a cheaper job next time?” I moaned.

“No way!” Bard yelled over everyone else’s groans.