"Sir, your transportation will arrive in a few moments."
Ren looked up from his sketchpad at the young Initiate who had just addressed him. The sight of the enthusiastic young solider cheered him up slightly.
"Yes, I know. I saw it going through the checkpoints." Ren replied, giving the Initiate a wan smile
"Do you need any help with your gear, sir?"
"No. You may go, Initiate Touring." said Ren, waving his hand dismissivly. The Initiate saluted, turned on his heal and strode away, soon disappearing into the entrance to the administrative headquarters.
Ren put down his pad, stood up from the equipment chest he had been sitting on and craned his neck at the checkpoint a quarter mile up the road to the headquarters. After a few seconds looking, he spotted the black van he had been watching for the past 15 minutes pull up to the guardhouse. Satisfied, Ren sat back down and picked up his sketchpad.
White Tide had a long history of encouraging its elite soldiers to peruse the arts. Originally it had been merely for its stress reliving qualities. Now, with the rest of the world gone to hell in a handbasket, being an artistic wellspring was an important (and profitable) business. However, it was also true that traditional materials were prohibitively expensive. Ren’s sketchpad was a byproduct tradition meeting realty. About quarter inch deep, it sported a roughly 8 by 10 inch screen cleverly designed to look and feel like paper. An included stylus allowed the user to write on the pad in a near perfect emulation of pencil on paper, and the internal memory stored and recalled up to 7000 pages of writing or drawing with the touch of a button.
The pad’s monitor had shut down to conserve power, so Ren thumbed the wake-up button. Examining the half-finished pencil sketch of a nearby building that appeared, he decided he had enough time to do an outline of the rest of the building. Using the pencil stylus, he managed to finish up with time to spare. Ren slipped the stylus into the pad and the pad into the chest and stood up.
The van pulled to a clean stop at the curb a few feet away from where Ren was standing. The driver stepped out, giving Ren his first good look at the man. and Comparing the skinny Asian looking man him against the descriptions in the intelligence reports, Ren decided he was looking at the Nightrider called Vesper. Ren opened his mouth to speak, but Vesper beat him to it.
"So, you’re the bloke I’ve been sent to kill." he said, grinning evilly
Ren, taken off guard, blinked at this, then jumped backwards, reaching for his pistol. He stopped, hand on gun, when Vesper began laughing and held up his hands in the traditional gesture of "don’t shoot."
"Heh, only screwing around with you. I’m actually here to pick you up, like we promised. Anyway, you’re Muhammad Tulhaba, right? Or… wait… don’t you go by your middle name? Ren, isn’t it?" Vesper said this all rather fast. Ren simply nodded "Oh, good. I’m Vesper. Nice meeting you."
Ren scowled, and Vesper started to laugh again. Abruptly, Ren began to laugh as well.
"Funny man." Ren said a moment later, shaking his head disbelievingly and still chuckling. "I should really throw you off a bridge. Anyway, if you would help me load my equipment into the van, we can leave."
Vesper nodded, and moved to pick up an end of the long metal chest that Ren had been sitting on. With difficulty, the two men managed to get the burdensome chest into the back of the van.
"What the hell do you have in there? Bricks?" panted Vesper.
"My main and backup sniper rifles, an assault rifle, my combat armor, repair gear, and about 100 pounds of ammo. Oh, and some personal effects" said Ren
"100 pounds!?" said Vesper, straitening up and giving Ren a hard look. "Jesus on a stick, we won’t have you shooting THAT much!"
"It’s mostly specialty stuff that I can’t get outside a Tide base, like monopoint AP rounds or DeadHeads. Remember, this IS a five-year contract. Anyway, shouldn’t we be going?"
Ren walked to the front of the van, opened the door, and got in. Vesper leaned back against the van again and sighed.
"Christ, 100 pounds? AP rounds? What does he think we are, some kind of super-squad?" Vesper muttered. He shook his head, then stood up with a slight groan and walked to the driver’s door. He looked at Ren and grinned again.
"Say, do you want to find out if I can jump the van?"
Vesper laughed at Ren’s alarmed look, jumped in, and began to the long drive south.
__
"Look, why can’t you just tell me where it is?"
"I already told you, it’s a secret."
Sighing, Ren leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. He had been trying, unsuccessfully, to find out the location of the Nightrider’s base for nearly a quarter of an hour. He was a bit perplexed about the whole matter. Prague was an important enough area that White Tide had collected basic intelligence data on the major gangs and factions in the area. The reports indicated that the Nightriders operated out of some sort of base, but made no mention of where it might be. This omission had bothered Ren the first time he had noticed it, and Vesper’s refusal to give him the location had made him curious. There was something fishy about this…
Sudden, screeching deceleration pulled him out of the half sleep he had fallen into. He immediately sighted the reason for the stop, and stepped out at the same time as Vesper.
A light rain had begun falling a bit after they had crossed the Elbe river, and had since evolved into a dirty, pounding rain. Through the curtain of rain, Ren could make out several overturned cars and large pieces of junk laying across the entire stretch of pavement forming what was obviously a roadblock across the entire stretch of pavement. Ren began scanning the area for activity. To his left, Vesper was squatting near the roadblock, muttering to himself.
"…wasn’t here this morning. How could…"
"Vesper." Ren said loudly, making sure he was heard. Vesper stopped muttering and looked up at Ren. "There are about fifteen people on bikes coming down the road. We’ve got about 60 seconds before they get here. Infrared implants," said Ren, answering the question Vesper had been about to ask.
"Oh… Bikes… Shit, it must be Bella’s gang! Look, get your sniper rifle and hide in that building!" yelled Vesper, pointing. "Make sure it’s silenced!"
Not hesitating, Ren sprinted to the back of the van and wrenched the door open. He spied his equipment chest, slammed down on the second emergency deploy button, grabbed his secondary, silenced, rifle as it were ejected, and dashed towards the broken looking building at the side of the road.
"Comm band is 420.2!" Vesper yelled after him. Ren raised his hand as he ran, indicating that he had heard
The door of the dilapidated building was sagging half off its hinges, and simply fell over when Ren kicked it in. He sprinted through the front room (startling the pigeons roosting on the eves), found the stairs and raced upstairs. Ren ended up in a second story bedroom with a large, broken paned bay window facing the street. He threw himself onto the ledge under the window, simultaneously queuing his comm implant to the band Vesper had told him. Instantly, a voice started whispering in his ear
"Ren. Ren. Please respond. I know you’ve got a comm implant. Please…" came Vesper’s voice
"I’m here," subvocalized Ren, interuping vesper in the middle of "respond."
"Thank God. Make sure you have a view of me and my surroundings. Now, Bella’s group is a superstitious lot. Shoot on my signal, you’ll know it." said vesper, sounding relived. "Shit, here they come. Don’t talk to me. I’ll leave my implant on open."
Ren switched on his infrared. Vesper was standing about 15 feet behind the van, a clearly defined patch of color against the cold background. A few seconds later, the gang drove up, pulling into a semi-circle around Vesper. From their postures, they were obviously pointing guns at the man. Ren could hear the growling of the bike and jeers of the riders through the open comm channel. Ren heard Vesper subvocalize a quiet "get ready." Ren swung his rifle’s scope up to his eye, keeping watch on the scene. Vesper had his hands up in the air now, and had begun speaking.
"What are you doing here?" he said, sounding defiant.
One of the riders got of their bikes and walked up to Vesper. The two stood face to face for a moment, then the gang member shoved Vesper full in the chest, knocking him backwards to the pavement. Ren aimed for the head.
"Yer on our turf, you little shit," came a deep woman’s voice. Ren realized, belatedly, that it must be Bella he was aiming at.
"Th-Thi-PUH" sputtered Vesper, who appeared to have taken a mouthful of dirt. "This is neutral ground!" He grunted as Bella kicked him.
"Not no more it ain’t. This is our new turf, and yer trespassing."
Vesper stood up and made motions as if brushing himself off. Ren couldn’t make out Bella’s face, but he couldn’t imagine she was too happy.
"You are a greedy woman. Greed is a sin, you know that?" said Vesper, in a baiting sort of tone
[I]What the hell are you up to, old man?[/I]
"Wh-what ya talking about, sh-shit face?" Ren was surprised to hear Bella’s voice was somewhat unsteady.
"I am a man of God," here Vesper leveled a pointed finder at Bella," and I can tell you, God punishes those who sin!"
"I.. You ain’t no…"
Ren pulled the trigger. At the exact same second, a bolt of lightning struck a nearby water tower. The rest of the gang stoop dumbfounded as Bella’s headless body slumped to the ground. To them, it must have seemed like her head had exploded in a blaze of lightning. One of them screamed, and the rest started babbling hysterically or screaming their heads off. Two ran down the empty street, one screaming "Jesus did it! Jesus did it!" Vesper began saying the last rights loudly, further adding to the pandemonium. Finally, he stopped, and looked around at the terrified looking people surrounding him. An eerie silence fell.
"Are there any more disbeliveers here?" A regular storm of "no" and "praise the lord" broke out. "Good. you three, bury the body. The rest of you, remove this roadblock."
Ren tried to keep himself from laughing out loud as he watched the gang scurry like whipped dogs as Vesper ordered them about.
"Ren. get down the block so I can pick you up without them seeing." said Vesper, who was now starting the engine."
"Alright. By the way, didn’t you say you were Buddhist?" said Ren, allowing a chuckle
"Well, aren’t we all Christians at heart?"
"Funny. Real funny."
Shelled appearance aside, Ren had to admit the Nightrider’s headquarters was pretty impressive.
“…yeah. I’ve got the new guy. Yeah. Pretty good, from what I can tell. Anyway, how long will the boot take?”
Ren turned his head from surveying his surroundings to look at Vesper, who was crouched over a nearly hidden intercom. The diminutive Asian had been talking to someone the last few minutes, his voice rising and falling. Apparently there was some sort of hold up. Ren was using the spare time to take in the surroundings.
All told, the surroundings were pretty imposing. Ren was standing where the stage should have been, back when the Chatrani – that’s what Vesper said it was called– had been theatre. Layers upon layers balconies surrounded him in a sort of horseshoe-like curve. Here and there, darks gaps marking fallen balconies stood out of the gloom, like missing teeth in some sort of insane smile. Ren shuttered and looked back down.
The wide stone floor in front of the stage must have been filled with seats at one point, but they were all gone now. Now, the only thing in the expanse was an old portable basketball hoop, and some chalk lines outlining a rough court. Bright electric lamps illuminated the area. Despite their brightness, the light faded into darkness towards the edges of the room. Straining his eyes, Ren could faintly make out the paint peeling on the far wall. Noting the position of the far entrance, Ren continued his scan.
The raised concrete platform that Ren and Vesper were on had a newer look to it than the rest of the area. The van was sitting in the middle of it, on a large, corrugated lift flat that took up most of the space. They had driven up through a tunnel through the side of the building. The entrance had taken Ren off his guard. Still a bit jumpy from the run-in with Bella, Ren damn near had a heart attack when Vesper swerved into that wall.
At least, what had looked to be a wall. The tunnel entrance was hidden by a seamless hologram; they went through the wall like it wasn’t even there. Ren hated being surprised– every sane sniper does– but he was also a hardened soldier. He collected himself quickly enough to start appraising the security. Pretty high end stuff, from what he could make out.
What a pity they don’t seem to invest as much into their internal systems
Ren, hearing footsteps behind him, turned around. Vesper approached, looking a bit disgruntled.
“Well, we’ll have a bit of a wait. One of Zero’s phage viruses got lose and tore up the main net. They’re bringing the backup system online in a minute or two.”
“Seems your network security isn’t up to the standards of your perimeter security,” said Ren, matter-of-factly.
“What?” said Vesper, who had begun fiddling around with some of the machinery on the corner posts, “Oh, no, our network is very secure. Military level, probably. Me and Zero see to that. It’s just that Zero whips up some mean-ass viruses. Seems there was some sort of collapse, and the computers got scrambled into full defense mode thinking it was an attack. Only problem was that the smartest computers got knocked out in the first power-outage, and one of the stupider ones accessed a virus instead of a defense program.”
“Glad you’re so prepared for an emergency.” Ren leaned against the post, smiling wanly
“I seriously doubt an attacker could get a hit in where the accident was. Not without blowing up half the place first.”
“Demolition midge droid and a floor plan.”
Vesper paused, considering this.
“Yeah, well… Yeah, I suppose you’re right. Should probably set up some procedures for things like that. See? I knew a good military viewpoint would come in handy.”
Vesper chuckled, then walked off towards the van. “Come on, the lift should be ready by now.”
* * * * * * * * *
The lift clattered to a halt, revealing a sizable subterranean garage. Vesper turned the van on, and drove forward. They passed an impressive array of bikes, cars, and, lastly, a vehicle that appeared to be an armored van. Or, perhaps, a very small tank.
“That’s my baby,” said Vesper, pointing at the tank thing as he drove by. “Fully armored personnel carrier with a top mounted dual .50 caliber machine gun turret and engine specs that would make your techies back home cry with envy. All controllable manually or by implant.”
Ren nodded politely. He had never been much into cars and the like. Besides, he had often worked around tanks and APCs. Still, it looked pretty impressive, especially in the yellow half-light that filled the room. And an implant interface was no small potatoes. Wait… An implant? Did that mean…
Discreetly, Ren stole a look at Vesper, who was concentrating on parking the van. For a second, he didn’t see anything unusual. Then, as Vesper leaned forward to get a better view around a corner, Ren spotted the unmistakable metal and plastic circles at the bas of the neck that marked Vesper as being wired. Ren leaned back, suspicion confirmed.
Vesper had an interface jack in the back of his skull. A high quality one, at that. Ren mulled over this, considering the possibilities on how a small group like the Nightriders had managed to get their hands on a delicate piece of cyberware like an interface jack. And come to think of it, Vesper’s eyes had an odd silver touch to them, not unlike some of the last generation models of flare compensation implants. Odd indeed.
“You getting out?” came Vesper’s voice, now on the outside.
Ren looked up. The van was parked, and Vesper was now standing outside the doorway, waiting on him. Ren immediately opened the door and got out. Mentally, he cursed himself. When he started working for White Tide, Ren had tended to tune out when he got deep into thought, a habit that had caused a great deal of trouble before he had cut it out. That he was starting it up again was a sign that his discipline was slipping. He was going to need his wits about him. Without speaking, he began helping Vesper unload the car.
- - - - - - - - -
“SWEET FUCKING CHRIST! WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED?”
Vesper stood, wide eyed and near hysterical, at the doorway to a very thoroughly ruined room. He steeped inside, turning his head wildly about. Ren, deciding silence was the best policy, quietly followed. “YOU!” Vesper bellowed, pointing an accusing finger at a tall black man who was now pacing towards them. Vesper darted forward and gripped him by the front of his shirt, pulling the taller man down to his eye level “WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS! MARCUS, START. EXPLAINING. NOW!”
So this must be their leader. Marcus… what was his last name again… oh yes, Fisher. Goes by Golem, if I recall correctly. Not making a very good show for the new guy, is he?
Golem appeared to be trying to answer, but didn’t seem to be able to get it out. Probably because Vesper was shaking him around like a rag doll, despite the half-meter difference in height. Ren privately reassessed the small mechanic’s strength.
Studying the damage, Ren could understand why Vesper, the so-called chief engineer, was so upset. Obviously a gym of some sort, one of the walls looked to have caved in. Loose wires were everywhere, illuminated by a few dying flares and some makeshift lighting proving a few shallow pools of illumination. In the near dark of the rubble, Ren could distinguish two or three people, working on some task he couldn’t quite make out. A quick sweep with night vision gave more or less the same impression.
“…don’t know HOW it happened, it just happened. Some girl claims that she somehow caused it, but it’s probably just in her mind. Still, it doesn’t exactly look like a normal collapse, does it?” came Golem’s voice, sounding a bit horse
Vesper had let go of Golem, and was now surveying the rubble. There was a deadened look to him, now.
“Can you fix up the wiring? At least to the point where we can turn the power for this section back on?” Golem finished
“Yeah, it looks like most of it isn’t buried. It’ll be a long job, though. Really long. Can probably fix the grid up to working level in a few hours,” said Vesper, not taking his eyes of the rubble
“Well, that’s good. I guess this section will just have to sit out the blackout for now. I’ll go tell them.” Golem turned to leave, and spotted Ren at the entrance. “Who… Oh, Vesper, is this the new guy?”
“Huh?” said Vesper giving Marcus a short confused glance, “What? Oh, yeah. Ren Teluabababla or whatever. Nice guy. Good shot. Now get the hell out of here, I need to work.” Vesper strode towards the people working on the rubble, barking technical questions.
With a shake of his head, Golem began walking towards Ren. Ren decided to get in the first word, “Hello sir. I’m Muh…”
“None of that sir crap.” Golem said, cutting him off “I’m Marcus, Marcus Fisher. Most call me Golem. And you would be Muhammad, our brand new Nightrider. Right?”
Golem was now beside Ren. The black man was a giant, even next to Ren’s stretched out frame.
“Right. Just so you know, I prefer my middle name, Ren. When can I start?”
“Whoa, slow down. We’ll give you a few days to get used to things before we start you up. Besides, we’ve got no excursions planned for a little while. Though, nowadays us, you never know…” said Golem trailing off into a mutter
For a brief second, Ren could have sworn a shadow crossed Golem face, but then the big man was laughing and slapping him on the back and talking again.
“Anyway, let’s get out of here before Vesper has an aneurysm. Come on, you’re probably hungry..”
Ren followed his new leader out of the broken room; suspicions of troubles gone, replaced with hopeful thoughts of food and rest.
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