324 Far Future Ch. 34 – Sharkey’s Machine, Part Four (1/2)

It took about an hour for the response team from the Runners' allies to show up, armored buses and carriers crammed with shooters hurtling our way, looking to reinforce, get some payback, see who dared mess with them, or avenge their buddies.

We weren't too sure of their motives, and it didn't matter.

The first thing to do was mess with the TC control signals when they reached that intersection. All green, head across... and the first two vehicles only had time to scream when they saw the haulers coming.

Buses went flying in explosions of metal, glass, burning fuel, and some flesh and blood, gangers screamed, and the haulers kept right on going. The cross-circuit bots unplugged themselves and scampered away, as TC got irritated with people messing with their control signals. But, this was late at night, and it only killed some gangers, so no harm, no foul.

We sent their kill totals to them later, and they responded politely and updated the numbers. One of those haulers was a leader, with almost five digits! I think we sporked some of the bets on place advances, so some bookies might get mad at us...

The drone mines ran up underneath their vehicles as the rest of the convoy stewed in place, wondering if they could trust the lights, and trying to get their buddies out of the burning buses.

Boomboomboomboomboom... ten more vehicles went ripping off the ground, they made some damn nice mini-explosives hereabouts, and the fine brothers inside them didn't fare too well, while filling the roads with more wreckage.

The Chill Dawgs decided they had better things to do, and got out of there as soon as possible. We let the scavs deal with the dead, as they'd do a fine job and inject some more money into the local economies, nothing to worry about.

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The Criminey Eels came in from the opposite direction. They were a street rod crew, prone to drive-bys, fancy muscle cars, and crazy driving, so TC tricks didn't mean shit to them. Spiked flats to blow out their wheels and raising the street bunkers to block their travel lanes at inappropriate times, however, that could annoy them. We didn't even have to kill them. Once half their cars were out of action, we just ID'd whoever was in charge of ordering them in, and a drone came plummeting down from on high to take him and his car out in a nice explosion.

We tracked the follow-up calls, and watched them all turn back as we were pulling out of there.

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The Gros Lobos were a bit more clever, getting word of our retreat path and opting to set up an ambush along it. Our Marked Watchers saw them getting into place, setting up snipers and the like, and some of our reserve crew followed the paths through the underways, literally came up through the basements of the buildings they were in, shocking some of the maintenance crews who got quickly out of the way, and took out their ground forces from behind. The snipers were boxed in, the drones came hovering down in front of them to let them know they were boned, and as they bailed out of the rooms they were waiting in, they were unceremoniously shot by the teams waiting in the corridors.

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The fourth group coming in was on foot. The Newvinian Rats came in purely on Mark I soles, a steady infiltration of manpower at street level and below. They had very good instincts of the understreets, and regularly infiltrated the territory of other gangs through the underways, so they had some knowledge of paths and tracks.

Going up against mindblade-users in tight quarters was a murderously bad idea, especially when they all had access to The Map of our combined travels in Janus Prime, including an incredibly detailed knowledge of the understreets. It was with very little fanfare that some bloody and murderous fights erupted on the streets and below, with the latter being close-combat and helping others once again learn that the Green and Gold earned every single bit of their reputation for being damnably tough. The top fight became a series of rolling ambushes and enfilades, the sneaky Rats moving into ambush after ambush, and really not enjoying the experience.

When they finally pulled out of our territory, two-thirds of them were dead, and they were running for it.

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The last wave was probably from the Awkman Hawks, who liked to use drones flying and landbound, and were pretty tech-savvy, being the gang responsible for setting up Sharkey's private network and all. Something like four hundred drones came swooping into our territory, rigged to target and blow up, swooping in like several flocks of oversized pigeons ready to ram into things and explode, killing everything around them as they did.

The anti-drone rockets were significantly cheaper than actual drones, since they didn't need terrain-following, coordination tech, or communication bands. As the jammers hit the drones, and their terrain-following tech ended up looking at the Habberblok ghosts and promptly fritzed, the mini-rockets launched from storm-style launchers turned the early morning into a fireworks display of falling drones and explosive payloads detonating. A lot of eyes were looking for the ones that were trying to be sneaky, and a lot of target practice put to work shooting them down.

Our spoils of war were trucked into one of the subfloors of an old distillery we'd taken over, now converted into our own fortified garage, and the kids now had more targets to go after.

The deaths sobered them up, as even with how tough they were and how skilled and how they could be healed, they could still die if they were hit. They were awesome, but this wasn't a game, and they could still be killed.

It did give them a huge mad on for Sharkey, and morale soared.

Us beating the snot out of the other gangs also did wonders for our reps, as the Goldilocks crew was more than happy to post all sorts of vids of them getting their asses handed to them.

We had begun dismantling Sharkey's Machine, and we'd see where this could take us.

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”I admit you have balls, but no sense,” I complimented the guy in black power armor lite, looking rather sleek and impressive. The mindblade he was displaying was a deep crimson, so he was a sword for hire, for whatever purposes. ”Cutting your way through my people was a nice way to prove your skill, but really, do you think you would have made it here if we'd wanted you dead?”