"Thanks Daryl." I said, shaking his hand as the last container was stacked on the others.
"No problem, Aden. The eddies you promised are enough, then we're all square."
"That I can guarantee."
We had already agreed together to give them a bonus when our home was done. With that, the trucks pulled away to be taken back and Daryl turned, walking up the ramp.
I fell into step beside him. "Not heading home?"
"Naa, the crew will be arriving soon, so I will just have an early start. Want to get this done."
"You're not the only one." I said with a laugh.
He joined me, chuckling as we crested the ramp. The heavy garage gates dropped down behind us. "No, I imagine not. But I want to check a few things in the basements, but otherwise they are now done. Just need to finish the fixtures, including those turrets and then clean."
"And the rest of the house?"
"Similar state to last week. We focused on the basement to get that done. However, water will be on for the entire house later today. Found some issues yesterday, but assuming they held overnight, it should be ready."
"What was the issue? Something we need to worry about?"
"Naa, there was a sealant not properly set, so it leaked. That fixed, there shouldn’t be any problem. You will need to periodically check them, especially that tank of yours, but otherwise it's done."
"Hmm, yeah, still 4 more weeks until the upstairs is done. At least. I expect closer to 6, to be honest. What with the wiring, fixtures, flooring and doors. There is still a lot left. Although, as I said, the big job of the water, heating and aircon is done."
"So the bathrooms are done?" I said hopefully. I desperately wanted a shower, I felt gross.
"Upstairs? No. But the basement ones are. Just waiting for the water to be turned on like I said."
"Ace." I said celebrating. Much to the amusement of Daryl.
Saying goodbye, I entered the front door, leaving him to it. After a quick look around, swinging past the kitchen to grab some goodies, I got in the lift.
As the lift smoothly came to a halt, the doors opened to laughter and giggles. Entering the vehicle bay, now called the Pit care of Nat, I found the girls curled up on the sofa.
"Aden!" Jess shouted as she ran and jumped at me. "We are the best mercs evvveeeerrr!"
I caught the human-shaped missile, swinging her around a few times. "Fuck yeah, we are!" I said, dropping her back on the floor.
Spotting the now free space next to the others, I pushed Jess away and made a break for it. "Yoik!
"Noooo. Ultimate Glomp Attack!" Jess shouted, jumping and landing on top of all of us.
Nat groaned as she was caught in the face with a wild foot. "That’s it. Kate, Aden, hold her."
I grinned, already knowing where this was going. I wasn’t the only one as Jess started to squirm and burst out into uncontrollable laughter. "No, please. NOOO. Stop. I'm going to wet myself."
"You should have thought of that." Kate said unsympathetically.
With a firm grip on her arms, I joined in on the tiggling, intensifying her giggles.
We only took mercy on her when she was gasping for air and wheezing away. We still held her as she slumped bonelessly across our legs.
Shimmying, I pulled the sweets from my back pocket and tossed them to Nat. "Here, you pass them out commander. You did a fucking ace job tonight. We all did."
"Hell yeah we did." Jess jiggled happily.
I reached and squeezed Kate into a side hug. "You organised this so well and I'm so proud of you. This couldn’t have gone better and has given us a huge leg forward. And we would never have heard of it if it wasn’t for you."
"Thanks Aden. It was mostly you lot, but—" Kate said, blushing prettily.
I cut her by flicking her on the forehead. "Don't give me that BS. It was your contacts that allowed this, never forget that." I said, her face darkening further.
Nat stated, smirking at her blush, while passing over her sweets.
"Don’t think you will escape." I said, having caught her smirk. I transferred my hug, pulling Nat in tightly with my other arm. "You led the gig perfectly. Kept us on task and safe the entire time."
"Yeah you rocked." Jess said.
Nat didn’t blush, but she did smile warmly, her face relaxed from the cold mask she had during tense missions. She relaxed into my hug before pulling away and leaning around me to pass Jess's 2 sweets over, who was making grabby hands.
"And I suppose you were there as well Jess."
Jess, who had been nodding along, froze as she realised what I said. "What?" She squawked. "I will have you kno…" She stopped when she saw me smirking.
"I kid. You were spectacular, and I couldn’t be prouder of you. Of all of you. We fucking nailed tonight."
"Thanks Aden. Right back at you. Without you, we wouldn’t be here."
"You're going to make me blush." I said, grinning at them.
I sighed, relaxing into the sofa as I sucked on the hard-boiled sweet. Orange flavour, my favourite. We just enjoyed the relaxing silence when Kate gasped.
"Holy shit. Jess off. Quick!" She said, scrambling to her feet.
I felt my heart freeze. "What? Is something wrong?"
"No. No, just wait. I'm grabbing the radio." Kate called from another room.
I slumped back. I should spank her for that. She couldn’t just say that. A few minutes later she came back in and turned it on, crackling to life.
"Good evening. This is London Network News, bringing you the latest from the Thames corridor. We begin with breaking developments at Surrey Quays Port, where operations have continued under heavy security following a major coordinated gang incursion earlier today. We are unsure at this time what was damaged or stolen but expect continued delays.
A spokesperson for Thames Meridian Logistics and Security which oversees trade and security in the area stated the situation was 'contained quickly and professionally' adding that the company’s 'continued investment in advanced port security ensured minimal disruption to this vital supply chains.' The government has issued no comment at this time."
Bullshit Kate and Nat muttered with Jess blowing out a raspberry. Yeah I was with them on doubting the security had been updated for the last 20 years.
"Fighting quieted early this morning—"
"Speaking of. What was Los No Muertos all about? That was so much bigger than I expected. Did you get any more information?" I asked.
Kate shook her head frowning. "No. Nothing. I have only just put out some feelers so... But they shouldn’t have gone that hard. I have asked around, including the fixer and will see."
"No worries. We should have had a clean break, although I will want us to lay low for a few weeks."
"What? Nooo. That’s going to be so boring."
"I know Jess. But I think we need to."
She sighed, like her life was ending, but relented before perking up. "Ohh, when can we look at our loot?"
"When Daryl and his team are finished up. So 3ish days." I ignored her pout and asked Nat. "When do you want to review the gig?"
"Tomorrow? While it is fresh?"
"I have some stuff tomorrow morning. Can it be the afternoon?" Kate asked.
"Sure what you got on?"
"I have an introduction to someone."
"But you don’t need to leave for that?"
"Naa, it will all be on agent."
"Fixer girl!" Jess said celebrating.
---
"Where are we placing these?" Jess asked, holding up a box of small cameras.
"They're for the Junction." Kate said, glancing up and then pointed at the pile for the very bottom basement.
"So this pile over there… wait, that’s the outside. So this one?"
"Yeah thanks Jess." I said, having glanced over.
After endless nagging from the girls for a few days, we had finally opened up the containers. Daryl's people had been and gone, finishing the last bits and pieces they needed to do. There should be no reason for anyone to come down here anymore.
So after I changed the codes, we got to work unpacking the metal containers. We had all vastly underestimated how long it would take up. We were just lucky we had a trolley that we could wheel out the larger boxes.
Further back, Nat grunted as she sheared through the metal cable locking the container. "Which one is that Nat?" I called out to her.
"The locks one. I thought it made sense with the turrets already done."
We had been lucky the containers weren't too tightly locked up. I mean, they were locked, sure, but in the grand scheme of things it was only a thick cable holding the doors together. It could have been so much worse.
"Yeah good call. We can stack them onto the same pile. Jess, is the first container almost done?"
"Yep yep."
"Preem. Can you start to wheel that pile then to the storage rooms?" I said, pointing at the keep pile.
We'd been sorting, or at least trying to, everything into clear piles. Mostly for those we were keeping, using, selling and temporarily storing until we knew what we were going to do with them. I was mostly in favour of just storing it all. I was sure we would find a use for it someday.
And I just knew as soon as we sold it we would need it. That was just how life worked.
Daryl had already taken the turrets and cameras for upstairs and would be back momentarily for the others around the property. They couldn’t be linked up yet; I would need to set up our architecture for that. I had been forcing myself to focus on other tasks first, no matter how much I wanted to get to it.
I would finish the turrets first and then I could move on to the preem shit that was the architecture hardware. I knew if I started, I would struggle to put it down. So best wait.
The ones in the Pit had already been installed. I'd wanted to do them myself, but having felt the weight of them, that had quickly changed. I hadn't even been able to shift the heavy turrets, let alone lift them to install into the cutouts in the ceiling.
When fully retracted, it was almost impossible to tell they were there, which was perfect and just what I hoped for. This had meant Daryl needed to cut larger slots for them, since the M240 was far heavier duty than we could have possibly dreamed of.
Same for the heavy one's going outside at each corner of the property.
I had already finished checking the lighter turrets, although that was only relative. They still shot a 7.62×51mm and could fire 650+ every minute. So nothing to scoff at that was for sure.
Pausing a moment to wipe the sweat from my face, I reached up to my tippy toes and checked the last connections for the turrets. It was overdone, as was the norm for me, with them hard wired in which wasn’t the common or the cheap way to do it.
But it was impossible to jam, and when set up properly on my net would be incredibly hard to breach. I would just have to make sure they were properly air-gapped so taking over one turret didn’t give you access to them all.
Happy the turret was wired correctly and there was nothing amiss with it, not that I thought there would be, but it was a turret in my home… so yeah, I was going to check that fucker. Before pushing the button to make it retract, I heaved the large ammo box and pushed it into place. I dropped the flaps and fed the feed into the gun.
Each ammo box had 300 rounds. Which wasn’t a lot. It would be able to blow through that in a matter of minutes if it unleashed it all. But this was the 12.7×108mm so it was fucking massive. The smaller turrets had 2000+ rounds in them.
Hitting the bottom, I leaned back on the railing on the scissor lift. With a hum as motors activated, the almost metre-tall turret retracted, leaving a smooth ceiling behind. Kneeling, I scooped up the controls and retracted the lift, almost tangling myself in the harness attaching me to the secure railings. Daryl hadn't let me use it unless I was safe.
In his words, 'it would look bad on the advertisement if his one client killed themselves on some of his equipment.' Which was fair.
Not that I complained, at 6 metres up, the ground felt a long way away.
"Sorted Aden?"
"That one yes, why?"
"We have almost finished with the first 2 containers and so the next one is the net chair. Want to do the honours?" Nat asked, holding up the bolt cutters.
I grinned. "How could I refuse?" I said, taking the cutter, again, Daryl's.
Thinking about it, we would need to get some of our own at some point. That list was growing by the day. It was mostly small things right now, like cutlery or furniture.
The cable gave way with a satisfying pop. I pulled it out of the way, tossing it with the other rubbish and stood back as Nat and Jess pulled the doors open.
I couldn’t keep the grin off my face or my heart fluttering from anticipation.
Only to feel stupid moments later when all I saw was a wall of boxes.
Durr. Everything was boxed away from transport. Should have thought of that.
Never mind, still cool. I loved that smell of new plastic and metal that wafted from the container. With a bit of grunting and a lot of swearing, we managed to get it out and stacked in the corner.
Thank god it had wheels. It weighed a fucking ton. Not that the wheels helped with Nat guiding us. We bounced off several walls to get there. I was only thankful it was quite as well packaged as it was.
It was going down a level, so we also emptied the other container with the net architecture stuff as well.
May as well do it in one go.
In the end, it took us three days to get everything unloaded and sorted. 3 days!
How it took so long, I had no idea, but it was done. I wasn’t quite sure what we were going to do with the metal containers. For now, they would sit there. Worse comes to worse I was sure we could use the metal for something.
The corpos took the attack and theft as gracefully as we expected, as in not at all and had been out in force. Alongside the police, who needed to be seen doing something.
Kate paused, carrying a box, her eyes flashing gold.
"Get any more deets?" Jess asked, grunting slightly as she lifted a particularly heavy box.
"Still not much. Everyone seems to be confused why they hit the port so hard. Most assumed like us, they'd skirmish, not a full scale assault. There are still rumours where they got the miltec hardware for the assault. The fixer I got the info from told me there was no way they should have had that sort of firepower."
"Is the word still its payback?" Jess asked.
"Seems that way, although some people are casting doubt on it. At least Pete has been dealt with."
"So they took the bait?" Nat asked.
"Yeah, once we released the deets about what he was getting up to the gang imploded. The scavs were also croaked."
"That’s good." Nat said, a small satisfied smile on her face. "By the way, can I see Lilly? They are back in town next week." She turned to look hopefully at me.
"Humm. I don’t think so." I said slowly. I wanted to see them too, not least I would love to have Helena look over my arm. It still wasn’t 100% right. I'd hopped time would settle it but I was no longer convinced it would. I couldn’t work it out. There hadn't been a problem for our eyes.
Maybe it was because it was larger or something?
"But it is next week…" Nat said.
"I still don’t think we can risk it. Kate, Jess?"
"Sorry I agree." Kate said, contrite.
Jess hesitated, conflicted but then nodded as well.
Nats face fell but nodded understandingly. I think she knew that already. But it was sad we couldn’t see them.
---
I thumbed the knife, extending the blade and slit the packaging covering the server stack. Once unpacked, I slid it into the corner and twisted the magnets, locking it to the floor and wall. It looked sleek at least, very corpo, with polished metal and a locking reinforced glass door.
And if that wasn’t enough, each stack had its own protective metal flap, which could also be locked into place.
The casings were all lined and hardened against radiation or other damage. The box claimed it could shrug it off an assault rifle. I wasn’t planning to give it a test and see how much of that was hype marketing. Still, when I had all 4 lined up, they looked ace.
With them in place, I connected the power and network cables. Daryl had already cut holes in the metal wall and fed cables through them, so it was just a matter of connecting it all up.
I was glad someone had thought about the doors swinging open, because I hadn't. But luckily they could all open, even stacked up against each other.
The actual servers were a pain to do, with each one was individually wrapped, but I put them in. All told, there were 24 servers. A ridiculous number and more than I would ever need as a personal net. But I hoped, apart from having more than I needed, one day the full net would be back online and maybe I could make use of it.
Maybe make a place for netrunners to hang out and exchange information or services? Maybe even teach newbies. I had enjoyed teaching Calum, more than I expected to.
Cyber cafes or netrunners hangouts used to be common, but with the fall of the net, that had dropped off. There were the occasional small shops where you could buy netrunning gear, but they were few and far between. Not to mention I'd heard rumours that Netwatch and their subsidiaries watched them.
Besides, no one wanted to be vulnerable while deep diving into the net like in the past.
I flipped and locked the last glass door and stood back. It was a sea of blinking lights, showing green across the board and the gentle hum of the fans as the stacks kept each sealed-off space environmentally controlled.
Now for the most important part and the item that cost millions. The mainframe and the heart of the net architecture.
Unpackaging it, I slid it so it was opposite the doorway, connecting it up and then locking it into place.
It looked good. Bigger than I imagined, but it was sleek, with polished metal highlights running up the sides of it.
In the centre was a screen, port and keyboard. Below that were some slots for ICE, not that I would need them with the huge amount of space I had on the servers.
Like the server stacks it was rated for rifle calibre shots and protected against EMPs and other radiation. It also had built-in capacitors, with a battery life of 24 hours. It was probably closer to 18, what with copros overpromising what their tech could do. But even so, it was impressive.
It would also buy us some time if there were a power cut.
With the fans humming away, the screen lit up, code flashing across it, until I came to the set-up pages.
I carefully followed the manual, reading each page as I went. I did not want to fuck this up; there would be no customer support. I snorted at the thought. 'Sorry, could you help me set up my stolen net?'
Most of it was fairly obvious, like setting the users and so on. But others were more interesting. For example, it had a wireless capability, which I could have used to connect my cameras and turrets too. Not relevant for me of course, but what was interesting was I could set the coverage area.
With no reason not to, I made sure it covered the house, right up to the boundaries. It wasn’t a weakness that could be exploited, or at least I didn’t know of a way.
I set three major sections to my net. The first was a public hub, in the hopes it would be used for my cyber coffee idea. It was locked down, what with me not expecting anyone, but it was there for the future. Then there was the second stage. That was private and that would be for most users, like the girls and guests.
The final section was effectively the internals, with all the settings and so on.
Then all that was required was waiting for the loading bar as my net was generated. As was always the case, the first 99% flew past and then dragged for a literal age before it finished the final one. I almost went and did something else, but saw how fast it had been climbing.
Then found myself antsy, waiting to get started.
I finally gave up and stalked away in disgust and headed to my netrunner room. It too was on the second floor of the basement.
The packaged chair was already in the centre. Now it was dropped in place; there was no way in hell I was going to be able to move it. It weighed a fucking ton and that was before I locked it into place.
I cut the wrapping off and threw it into the corner. Like everything else, the large chair looked sleek as fuck. It was massive, sure, but had graceful lines, soft real leather and tasteful colours. Or at least I assumed so. It just looked like a grey chair to me. It was a reclining padded leather chair with a thick central chair leg. From it snaked a bundle of cables, which I plugged in. It wanted a beefy power supply and then was routed onto the network.
Not surprising with all the add-ons it had. And there was a lot. From simple stuff like biomoniter and stabilisation systems that you might find in high end hospitals. All the way to the built in Diagnet. Not from Zetatech like I wanted but it was still from a repitable brand.
Around back, it also had several monitors and clear containers. One was for the liquid coolant that could be pumped around the custom netrunner suit. The other was for others to observe my running if they wanted.
The suits themselves looked silly on me. They were far too large, or in the case of the female one, did not fit my body shape. I would need to get them resized, but once I did, they would be preem.
The coolant cable attached on each side, pumping the coolant all around the body, focusing on areas that had higher heat build-up, like the head and neck.
Apart from a terminal the room didn’t have much else. One thing I quickly noticed was how exposed I felt while in the net chair. I knew I was safe and yet I felt almost naked.
So much so that I asked Daryl about putting a door in. Which then led into putting doors into each of the rooms. Why we didn’t have them in the first place I couldn’t remember. I was sure I it seemed like a good idea at the time but for the life of me I couldn't remember it.
Only the netrunning room was done quickly with the others to be done at a later date.