Our new house still looked like a building site. Which made sense… it was one.
We couldn’t see much from the outside, what with the scaffolding and plastic tarps all the way around the site. It hid the entire plot, enough space for 6 terraced houses.
We were lucky that at both ends of our plot were small roads, detaching our land from anyone nearby, which was perfect for us.
Nat punched in the code and the metal gate swung open.
The site wasn’t truly secure, but then nothing truly was. Daryl had guarded it for the first few months, with us taking turns as well. But now it was mostly secure that wasn’t such a large concern.
Our new home didn’t use the entire plot, with a fairly large gap between it and the road. That was by design; firstly, the home was already massive for the 4 of us, not even mentioning the basements. So we didn’t need more room. The space around it was also perfect to set up sensors, and in the corners of the plots were bunkers ready for turrets to be placed in them.
Complete overkill.
But a man's home was his castle and I aimed to make it unassailable. We would be safe here.
The brick terraced façade looked like most other buildings in the area. It was two stories, not including the sloped roofs, with doors and windows. They led nowhere right now, but there was space to have tenants if we chose to in the future. They wouldn’t be large, but I bet security would more than make up for the smaller rooms.
While the outsides looked worn and old, it hid the thickness as well as the metal reinforcement. That had been Anna's idea. We had a huge amount of leftover metal, so we used that.
The windows had bars over them as well as blinds so no one could see or get in. If they could, they would see the sloping pyramid of reinforced regenerative concrete which was where our home truly was. Off to the right was a mid-sized garage that, when opened, sloped downward to curve under the house into the basement.
Jess bounced on ahead, only to pause impatiently outside the central door. "Come on, I want to see inside!"
Sighing, Nat moved and unlocked the door.
This opened into a tiny passage leading sharply off to the right. In time the walls would be painted and tiled, but for now it was covered in a coating of dust, with unfinished fixtures in the wall and ceiling. One notable missing feature was the turret that would drop down.
Without the wall rendered, we could see the peaky hole that would allow us to look or shoot into the kill box.
Yeah, it was over-engineered. Stupidly so, but I loved it.
I shut and locked the door behind us and followed Jess along the passage, light in hand, to reach another reinforced door. Another electronic lock and we were in. The door was somewhat awkwardly placed, what with the sloping walls, but that was fine with me. It was a bit steeper than I’d envisioned and needed to tilt my head to not bash it on the ceiling.
The rest of the house was very similar to the passageway. Wires hung from sockets and light fixtures, and some flooring was still up, waiting for the last of the electricals to go in. But the bones of it were there. The electrician should finish the ground floor within the next week and then the floors could be tiled and cleaned.
Like the passageway, everything was coated in a fine film of dust and concrete powerder.
The hallway led to the heart of the building, with rooms leading off either side of it. Both storage right now and to be honest I wasn’t sure what we would use them for. But you could never have enough space. Directly ahead was the small armoury and then to its left was the door into the kitchen. A massive room, but Kate wanted to try cooking, so I gave her the best.
Even if it would take time to fill it with gadgets. But that shouldn’t be hard to find and acquire, otherwise known as steal.
To the right of the armoury were the stairs to the bedrooms above us, which, when we poked our heads up, were further behind than anywhere else. Ignoring the bathrooms which were in but didn’t have running water we left to enter the armoury.
Unable to resist, it had a secret lift that led to the basements. Which, to be honest, were where the majority of our important shit would be kept. There was another entrance that wasn’t hidden under the stairs. It had a closing door so it just looked like it was a part of the stairs, but it wouldn’t be hard to find, unlike the one in the armoury.
The lift shuddered to life and carried us down to the first level of the basement.
After a few moments, we dropped into a large room, more of a chamber than anything, almost 6 metres high and 30 deep. The walls were polished steel, with vents to let the air and condensation move. It had nothing in it yet, but one day I hoped to have a collection of vehicles and turn it into a mechanics workshop.
"It's huge." Kate said, giggling as her voice echoed around the room.
We spent several minutes shouting and listening for the echoes before exploring once more.
This area was less unknown to us, having seen it already, but it was far more complete than it was the last time we came.
Off the main chamber were a number of rooms, again all empty, but they would eventually be workshops and several large storage rooms. There was enough for all of us to have our own workshop, even if Kate and Jess didn’t want one at this stage.
Entering the lift once more, we dropped down to the last level of the basement. Here would be another number of workshops and storage rooms, but the main attraction was the gun range and training rooms. It even had a full gym.
I expected to spend most of my time here. It would house the ripperdoc room and servers. It would also contain the home modem for the net architecture, which the cameras, locks and turrets would connect to.
I hoped in time to even set up a cyberrig here. But that was years away, I expected.
"It looks so good, Nat said. I still can't believe all this is ours. Thanks Aden. Without you…" Nat said.
I grinned and pulled her into a big hug. "We all did this."
"Yeah were all awesome!" Jess shouted. "Group hug!" Her and Kate piled on and I just held them all, enjoying the peace we had.
"Should we check the last lift?" Kate asked.
"Naa, there is nothing to see yet and it still isn't safe yet." I said.
The last level of the lift led to the underground area we had claimed. When Daryl was finished here, I was hoping to get him to work on it if possible. It would depend on whether he had another job. If he did, we would need to plan something else since we certainly couldn’t afford his proper fees.
Not yet at least.
---
"It was an impressive jump." I admitted.
"Of course it was. It was me. "
"Yeah you're real elegant. I think I still have a recording of the incident that shall not be named."
"What?" Jess squawked.
Nat smirked, shoulder nudging Jess. "Tell me you do. Please tell me you do."
"I will find it later. I can make it my screensaver. Or I could." I said, sticking my tongue out at her. It was always good to have blackmail material. If she ever found an input it would be fun showing them the embarrassing video. Not that that was on the cards yet.
She drew the eye, but she didn’t seem interested yet. None of them were. Nat was far more interested in boxing than a relationship and Kate was more interested in networking than in dating. Besides, she was far too young, even if her good genes were already showing.
I was thankful for that; none of those in the gang were any way near good enough for them. Although I was looking forward to filling in for her dad in scaring the shit out of her dates. I was looking forward to doing it for all of them to be fair.
"Give it." Jess jumped on my back.
Laughing, I caught her easily and threw her onto the bed. Passing off the food, I dove on after her and entered a vicious tickle battle. Something Jess would never win. Even the hint of tickling her was enough to send her into a giggling fit.
Rudely Nat wasn’t ticklish at all. Which just wasn’t fair in my opinion.
"Help… help." Jess gasped.
"Deserved," Nat said unsympathetically.
"Be… Betrayal."
"I'll save you!" Kate cried, jumping onto my back.
She was no more successful than Jess before her and was soon pinned under me as I tickled them both mercilessly.
The smell of food broke up the battle. Nat had cracked open the takeaways and they were spread out across the table.
As I rolled off them, Jess blew some hair off her face. "Fatty."
"Am not."
"Are too."
"Am not""are too""am not""are too"
We were silenced by an accurately thrown rag catching me in the face. "That’s enough you two." Nat said.
Sticking my tongue out at her, I got up and sat, picking up my noodles and discarded the chopsticks for a fork. I still didn’t understand how people used them. I was 90% sure it was black magic. And no matter what the girls said, it wasn’t a skill issue.
We fell silent as we stuffed our faces with the good food, rather than the shitty kibble. Anything was better than that, but this takeaway was especially good. It was a local to our new home and I could see us becoming a regular patron.
I was looking forward to the day to never have to have kibble ever again. We couldn’t afford food like this all the time; the house was still draining most of our income, but we could splurge every now and then.
It was of course Kate who found it. Having heard good things from locals. How she met them was a mystery to me, but I couldn’t deny the usefulness of her connections. I attributed quite a lot of it to her work with Jeff. She spent hours picking his brain over it.
I sighed, slumping back, and patted my belly. That was better.
I couldn’t quite finish the last few mouthfuls, and the gannet disguised as Nat perked up. "Are you done?" She asked hopefully.
"Go for it." I said passing it over.
"T'nks." she said through the mouthful of food.
How she could stay ripped as she did with the amount of food she put away was a mystery to me. I swear it went to her tits or something, which had tripled in size. It seemed like whenever I turned round we needed to get her a new set of bras.
Kate and Jess curled up next to me, perched at the back of the bed. Kate's eyes glowed blue as she accessed some data on her agent. Not uncommon these days, she was becoming a full-on fixer. I would need to talk to her about it but there was no rush.
We chatted aimlessly for a bit while Nat finished and then propped herself up next to us. "So… thoughts?" she asked.
"I think it is possible. If we can make a good plan, I'm down."
"Yay, let's goooo. It will be ace.” Jess said. “Although do we have any more deets on the Los No Muertos?"
She did but it was didn’t change our thoughts on them. It might have actually made them worse.
"Yeah, so fuck being near them." I said, succinctly summing up our thoughts on the matter.
"True.” Nat said. “Do we know which gate they will hit?"
"Maybe the south?"
"Will they be that obvious?" Jess asked, and it was a fair question. The gang turf was south of the port so it would make more sense to come at it from another angle, although saying that…
"They are hardly big thinkers." Nat said. "But if we plan for them to hit either gate, we should be fine."
"Okay so we go ahead. Now what are we kelping? Do we get just what we need or…"
"Go big!" Jess said. That was hardly surprising; I should have expected that.
"I agree." Kate said.
Jess did a double take. "Wait you do? I mean, like of course you do. But..."
Kate carried on, ignoring Jess's antics and when she tried to but in covered her mough with her hand. "If it was just us, we would still need a van, and we might be able to get our turrets and cameras, which is the bare minimum we need. But I have doubts we would be able to find a van for it. And some of the shit there is top tier. If we are going to risk it, we might as well do it well."
"Yeah, if we are doing this, we should get more. It will also make the gig much easier. We would be able to get in and out much faster." Nat said.
"Okay so we go for broke. You have the list Kate? Thanks, let's go through it now and mark things we might want." I said and opened the document Kate sent us.
It wasn’t a very helpful list, at least not at first. The list the fixer provided just contained the ship arrival time and the crate Kate originally asked for, so the cameras and turrets. But with a bit of excel magic and the data I pulled from the net, it gave us a much more complete picture.
Kate had already stitched the two together, so I started scanning it. Lots of it I ignored. We did not need tractor parts. But some of the others widened my eyes with greed. My list ended up with 8 containers marked as possible targets by the time I was done.
Some I felt more strongly about than others.
"Some of this stuff is preem." Nat said. "But isn't some of it too hot? Like that Net architecture container? That must be with a lot right?"
"No it—" Jess said, having escaped Kate.
"No Jess, I'm serious." Nat said, holding her hand up to cut her off. "Just a few of these items must be worth millions of eddies. That is some serious heat."
"You're not wrong. A good one can set you back millions, and one like that, I have no idea. Don’t even get me started on the cyber rig." I said.
We all turned to Kate expectantly, who's eye lit up.
"According to the fixer, all the containers belong to small corpos and if we were selling them, sure. But we are keeping it all, so it shouldn’t be a problem." Kate said confidently. "Besides, many of these items are restricted, which should not be sold outside of the EEC, so even if we did, it would be hard for them to make too much of a fuss."
"Fair enough."
"Sweet." Jess celebrated, doing a jiggle from where she was lying in the bed. "Best heist ever."
"Let's pull it off first." I said, laughing and hitting her gently with a pillow.
"So what containers are with thinking and how many should we go for?"
"Anything above 4 or 5 and we will start to run into issues."
"So 4 four us and then 1 for the team helping us? Good, so I want to put forward the cyberchair and net architecture ones."
"Yeah, obviously." Jess said. "Then there is the turret and shit. That leaves the last one."
Yeah taking that container would be huge, well, they all would be. But the turrets and ammo in there were significantly better than we had been planning for. In fact, we would have to enlarge the holes for them slightly. At least for the heavy turrets we would. If done right they would be completely flush to the floor or ceiling and unnoticeable.
A nice problem to have.
For example I wanted a heavy turret that was anti-vehicle shooting, penetrator, explosive-tipped 50 call rounds. Far and above what we planned for. By multiple leagues.
The cameras too, were heads and shoulders above what we planned to have.
"So what final container do we need?" I asked.
"What about this one. It has more preem weapons?" Kate said.
Jess hummed thoughtfully. "Do we need that? Wouldn’t the container with the cyberware be better?"
Nat shook her head. "Naa, we should leave that one. It's going to IE here in London so might not be worth it. And don’t think we haven't seen what you are trying to do."
"What?" Jess said, trying… and failing to sound innocent. She was still desperate for cyberware.
"I actually think we should get container MSCU 914022 1." I said.
"Hmm, why?" Kate asked. "We already have locks. Some of the other stuff seems better."
"The main draw is the locks of course. But the bonus electronics, all of which are advanced stuff and hard to come by would be ace. Maybe, but I don’t want to get too greedy. Besides much of it we wouldn’t be able to use anyway."
"But wouldn’t this one be better? It has a bit of everything. Weapons, swords and your locks Aden."
I shrugged, not sold on it. It didn’t mention how good the locks were, unlike the crate I picked where it was stated. "True. I leave it to you. I'm fine either way."
"Okay hands for the 25-08-06. Okay that's it then. Sorry Jess." Nat said apologetically.
"It's fine." She said, pouting. "But I want to get some for the next heist."
"It’s a promise." I said. "So its decided. We will grab: HLXU 409182, SUDU 884120 6, MAEu 603517 4 and TEMU 410982 3. What about the container to use as payment?"
"That’s easy. Container HLXU 227549 0 is perfect."
Pulling up the container, I agreed. It was perfect for any nomad, the majority of it made up of car parts.
"Am I reading this right?" Jess asked.
"I'm seeing it too." Nat said. "It has the parts to build a tank?"
"Only some of the parts." Kate muttered.
"Yeah, but the hardest to source…"
Kate shrugged. "So?"
Nat opened her mouth for a comeback only to pause, before grinning to Kate. "Fair. So we are agreed?" She asked, looking at each of us.
"Even with the container we would likely need to give them a retainer fee. I will check what the standard is. I have Milo's deets from Jeff. So it should be above board to find some crew to meet."
Yeah he would know. He was the main fixer for most of the nomads coming through London. There were some small timers up north but he was the largest by far. Rumour was, he lived in the still-standing parts of the Crystal Place and even had direct connections to Sophia Brightchild and maybe even further afield with connections in the EEC.
Brightchild was the undisputed leader of the nomads. Most recognised groups, particularly the large ones recognised her authority. Some almost saw her as a messiah for her actions during the war between the nomads and MLA.
"So if we get the transport, are we going loud or quiet?" Jess asked.
"A mixture. Pass the laptop." Nat said, making grabby hands at Kate, who was closest.
Grumbling, she got up to pass it over.
"So you can see here," she said, pulling up a map of the docks. "Most directions are out."
"Yeah, like, fuck them. But we could hit from here, up in the north east." Jess said, pointing at the road that looped along the north bank of the river. "If we can get past this section of fence there are almost no cameras. At least I didn’t see any?"
"Nor I."
"But how would we get through the fences and walls?" Kate asked. "The fence was electrified and I doubt we could just drive through the walls."
"I can deal with the cameras and any other sensors along that side of the wall." I said, already imagining how I would do it.
"Good, then that will let us get close. I'm thinking we cut the fence and then explosives along the wall?" Jess said, looking at Nat for her thoughts.
"It will need to be the right kind. I bet those walls are reinforced. But I should be able to make something from my books. If we time it right it will be hidden by the Los No Muertos's attack."
"Also, if I get a boost I can secure and mark the containers."
"Also put trackers on them." I said.
"Good thinking." Nat said. "Can you make that?"
"Yeah leave it with me."
"Good. So that just leaves getting the container onto the lorry."
"I should be able to change the location of the containers to place them near that wall, making it easier."
"Preem."
"So we drive the lorry through and then load the crates and get back out again?"
"I think that is the way to go." Nat said, "But I will need to do some more thinking."
"That’s fine. It will give me something to work off at least."
"Assuming it all goes to plan and we have the container AND we are out. What next?" I knew that was unlikely, but a man could dream.
"I have thought about that. Here." Kate said, pointing further east of the docks, in Deptford, still south of the river and just past a small tributary joining the Thames. "This car park is perfect. We can swap cars and go our separate ways."
"Good idea. But why that one? This one is closer right?" Jess said, pointing to the map.
"It is, but my one has a gang entrance to the Labyrinth. From there, we could drive all the way home. All without ever going above ground."
"You genius." I said, pulling her into a big side hug.
She blushed. "Thank you. I will need to dip into the last of our funds to buy passage."
"That’s cool. It's more than worth it. I was worried about any tracking they have in the containers, but they shouldn’t work underground."
"Is there a scanner we can use to check for that?" Jess asked. "If so, I can do it while I mark them."
"Fuck knows. But there must be. I will have a look."
"Who would we swap to?" Nat asked. "Can we get Daryl to help?"
"If not, there are loads of Transit Rats that would be able to go from there. We just need to find some trustworthy ones."
We chatted late into the night, planning and accounting for everything we could think of.
---
"Here they are." Kate muttered, subtly pointing at the crew that just walked in. Kate and I were sitting in a corner booth in the pub called The Black Transit. It was run by Mr Burnout, a Fixer and was effectively neutral territory. At least in our neck of the woods.
We were deep within the Labyrinth, one of the many small hidey-holes.
There were better and larger places where the more important merc met, but A) they would have cost an arm and a leg to get in and B) we wouldn’t have even got a look in in the first place.
Nat and Jess were connected to us by agent and were on overwatch. Nat was outside and Jess was resting by the bar, nursing a water. It must be the one place in London that stuck to the law and didn’t serve children drinks. When Jess tried to argue she was an adult, she got a very unimpressed look from the barman who looked like he had seen it all before.
The booth we had paid decent eddies to rent was isolated from the rest of the pub so no one would be able to overhear our conversation, not even with cyberaudio. Well if they had good enough they would be able to, but that was unlikely.
If they could afford that, what were they doing here?
"Game faces people." I said as the group of 4 approached.
2 broke off, both heavy-set men that made bodybuilders look weak, to lean against the bar. While the other 2 swaggered confidently towards us and sat down in the opposite padded bench.
"Thank you for agreeing to meet, Thomas—Rowan." Kate said, nodding briefly to them.
As she went through the niceties, I inspected the 2 mercs. They were pretty much what I was expecting when Kate described them. Full-on chrome jocks, with heavy mods that were barely concealed. I would hazard a guess none of them had worked for their impressive muscles.
I could be wrong but they just gave off that feeling, like they were trying too hard. Their matching uniforms and buzz cuts didn’t help. Others might have been fooled but I could see through them and they hadn't served. So it was all bravado or a gimmick.
"Likewise." The leader said.
He might be the worst. Apart from his khaki trousers, several of his teeth glinted gold as he spoke. Never a good sign.
The leader leaned forward, maintaining eye contact and trying to loom over us. It might have been intimidating if Avery couldn’t do it ten times better. He kept his hands on the table, almost relaxed, but I could feel the tension in them.
He was not nearly as confident as he was trying to make out.
"So what's the deets. Your reps good. Which is the only reason why we agreed to this meet." The second said.
"Likewise." I said, coolly. Starting to like them less and less.
"If you are not interested we can end this here." Kate said, raising an eyebrow.
She was less than pleased as well, obviously not what she was expecting. Our research made them out to be far more professional than this showy group, but maybe they were just putting a bad foot forward.
"He didn’t say that." Thomas said, stopping his attempt at looming over us. At least he recognised it wasn’t working. "Just warning you."
"Right back at you." I said. "Your rep is solid, which is why you are sitting here."
"Fair. So the deets…"
Kate pulled a datachip from her pocket and slid it over the table. "We will be hitting the Surrey Quays while another gang creates a distraction. There we will be collecting 5 containers, 4 of ours and the last will be your payment."
"You're having a laugh." Rowan said, his face incredulous. "Can you take that heat kid?"
"The chip explains it all." Kate said, ignoring Rowan and staring at the leader, who had slotted the chip in, his eyes lighting up as he scanned it.
He raised his hand, silencing his second. "It is a good plan, but Rowan has a point. How do we know you can take the heat and won't flip on us?"
"Same way we know you won't, reputation. We get in and out with no one clockin us. Then at the end point, we go our separate ways and cut contact."
Thomas passed the chip over for his combative subordinate to look through it.
As he did, he asked. "What if the distraction doesn’t happen?"
"You keep the retainer fee and we go our separate ways, with no hard feelings." Kate said immediately.
"And we will stay nearby until we see the distraction?"
"Yes, we have our window of three days. We will be in position and waiting."
"And the carpark?"
"It is on the Firm turf, so if we pay the fee we will be safe enough."
"1 out of 5?" Rowan asked, the glow fading from his eyes. "It seems to me we are doing most of the heavy lifting."
"You will provide the muscle." Kate corrected, still speaking in a slow, confident voice. "But would you know about this? Create the plan, exit strategy, organised this. I can go on, so no. That is the deal. If that is not appealing, we will go elsewhere."
"Not if—"
Kate burst out laughing at that, clearly anticipating his threat. "Do you want to go down that route?"
"He was merely speaking aloud." Thomas said. But the tightness in his posture said otherwise.
'Jess: He's lying.' Jess messaged from her position by the bar. She had moved to keep the 2 others of Thomas's crew in her sight.
I was willing to call his bluff on this. If he did that, his time as a merc or solo was gone forever. No one would trust him ever again. Well I am sure there would be some jobs, but they would be sketchy as fuck.
They carried on asking clarifying questions, some of which were very good, renewing my hope in them and then we got to the dreaded haggling. They wanted a larger retainer fee and we couldn't budge too much on it. But Kate handled them like a pro and we eventually agreed and shook on it.
She laid out the deal in full one last time, recording it with her cybereyes so we had a record, something Jeff recommended. We didn’t relax until Nat gave the all clear from outside.
I did a quick scan to make sure they didn’t leave any bugs as Jess and Nat piled in. Unlikely, but as my favourite saying goes, it wasn’t paranoia if there are people out to get you.
"So what do you think?" Nat said.
"I think we can trust them not to screw us. But, like, I don’t think we want to be around them long term." Jess said.
"Agree. They came off as cocky and reckless." I said.
"And tryhards." Kate muttered.
Nat nodded. "Yeah, I thought they were trying too hard. If we didn’t know Avery and Daniel, maybe I would have bought it, but…"
"So we go for them for this job and see?" Kate asked.
Agreement echoed around the table and when we all agreed, I gave Kate the green light. "We will need to case out the docks again, at least to go in and change the container location."
"I also want to spend some time watching gate patrol routes for the guards. The recordings you got from the cameras should help." Nat said.
"Good idea, is there anything we can do for the car park? To make sure we're not double-crossed?"
"I thought of that. If Daryl is willing to help us we can have him around with a hidden turret set up, just in case." Nat said.
"That would do it. But you don’t think they will Jess?"
"I didn’t get that impression."
---
Hope you enjoyed the chapter. There is a lot of dialogue, how did it flow for people? Anyway thanks for all the support.