321 Far Future Ch. 31 – Sharkey’s Machine, Part One (1/2)
Full auto hard and hot light walked up his body in fiftieth of a second pulses, ending with his throat and the spine behind it, blood-red banefire doing all the work as the guy dropped whatever he was going to throw back at us to stop us, and fell back into the van.
Which left the door open and swinging nicely. Trindi, without even thinking about it, slammed her shotgun down on the armrest mount on her door, centered the leyser sight, and launched her frag load.
The shining, Nimbus-charged load arced through the air nicely and right into the interior of the van. There was a flash of green-gold light, and screams as the windows within blew out, many of the pieces painted scarlet.
Billi didn't even slow down as the van wavered. The solid steel grill slammed into the corner of the van, and the wheels whined as he bumped it out of control. It careened right before the driver could correct it, slamming up to the rails, and I imagine he had a big 'fuck me' look on his face.
TC naturally didn't give a fuck about him, and the cargo hauler slammed into him doing a hundred and fifty, and massing a whooooooole lot more. The van was blown into the air and over, the front of it a compressed mass of metal and meat, and it flew right back and over us as the cargo hauler kept going, totally unperturbed save for a couple additional scuff marks.
I sent off an email to TC that cargo hauler YTJ-2394 could up its kill count by four, and they sent back a nice email thanking me, it would be so noted on the hauler's record, and would I like to see the current kill total records for the hauler lanes?
I politely demurred as Billi spun the car, for a moment the tires moving as if greased, then suddenly gripping the ground again. The roar fell to a happy purr. There was a Driver at work...
”Shall we go see who they were?” Trindi asked, chambering two slugs made for cyborg-popping... or plain flesh and bone in armor, if it came to that. Her Nimbus flicked back up, making sure that both rounds would land deep.
”That sounds marvelous.”
Billi obediently coasted up to the ruins of the van. I hopped off as Trindi got out, stepping over a couple broken bodies that had been flung out of the back of the van when it did its vertical 180. I dumped their faces into my Band and sent them back to the blok, where my Goldilocks crew promptly starting going for facial recognition.
”Wrecker's on the way,” Billi told me. No need to waste the material in the van. Melt it down and feed it into the printer. It's how we built the wrecker itself, actually.
Find authorized novels in Webnovel，faster updates, better experience，Please click for visiting.
There'd be enough guys to sweep up the mess, too.
I let Trindi use her claw to rip the door off, not much caring if anything inside was still in danger, and approved as she waited for her Nimbus to come back from the Sun Strike before she actually tore it open and looked around.
She Visualized their faces, transferred it to the Goldilocks crew, and facial recognition went out quick.
”Borg-boys from a Sharkey gang affiliate, the Dunner Dawgs,” I /repeated for just about everyone as the hits came back from Blok Security's link to the Juris databases. ”I'm betting just about everyone has had just about enough of Sharkey by now, right?”
The /affirmations came back quickly. Ever since we'd offed four of his best borgboys come to catch a baby blade, he'd been itching to get back at us. Random shootings, drive-bys, attempted knifings, even a sniper attempt or two had been aimed at members of the Green and Gold. Most of the people doing it were dead, of course, and retaliation had not been withheld, as Karma well-earned was eagerly sought for.
But mass unloading on the civilians of the blok? That turned a desired challenge and threat into something a bit worse.
It was time to end him and his crew.
----
I advised, but I did not directly participate. I so informed them that I could go in there and Kill Them All, and leave my students absolutely shit to do. There was a popular protest against such Karma-stealing action on my part, and they got to work.
We had a number of retired soldiers brought in for tactical advice, not hard when a blok houses tens of thousands. They had a lot of vids to look at for some of the steps that should be taken, some inventively crazy ideas that were mostly shot down, and sometimes implemented just for the sheer zaniness of doing them. I let them go to it.
The number of students I was teaching had blossomed, and then blossomed again. While my Marked said very little themselves, the number of kids who had mindblades proliferating like mad had caught a lot of attention, especially when those kids turned out to be pretty damn good with them. Snatch gangs attempting to grab themselves some baby psis were usually completely obliterated, and we dug out at least two dozen of them with the old bait-and-burn tactics.
And if I happened to follow their chain of asset disposal Upspire, well, nobody spoke about mysterious deaths in various corps, clans, and Houses that went on, and I got to practice my infiltration and assassination skills on people truly deserving of them. Win-win!
The quietest and most merciless of my students were the Goldilocks crew.