Chapter 72: Doubt
Checking the files our Mr. Johnson had given us didn’t help much. They were very light on details about the squatters, simply mentioning that there were orks in the mines, and even lighter on information about the wider situation. The only bit of good information, assuming it was legit, was the map data with the location of the mine, and a schematic of the mine’s layout in the pre-lava days. The whole thing stank like week-old tuna left in the sun.
Twilight was the first to speak, after we finished going over the information in Berserker’s van. “You know, Master, I wonder if this is less of a double-cross, and more of a distraction. Or a way to justify some other action people were already wanting to take.”
“What do you mean, Twilight?”
She brought up a map of Seattle in AR so that we could all see. It focused in on the Puyallup district, and then down to the Carbonado area. Different color overlays showed gang territories in the area. Some overlapped in places, where there were either ongoing disputes or some kind of sharing arrangement. Go-gangs, for instance, tended to be less into claiming territory and more into claiming routes, which meant that they didn’t always conflict with a local street gang.
Unsurprisingly, the Fortune Drop Mine was in one of those territories. And the lucky winners were a group called the Headbreakers. Not the most creative name for a gang, but far from the worst.
Iceblade’s Knowledge Skill (Gangs) check: 6d6 = 2 hits, 2 miss
The name jogged something in my memory. Or, rather, the implanted memories from my skills. The Headbreakers were an all-ork gang. Kept to themselves, mostly. Supposedly, they were fierce when protecting their area of Carbonado, but never pushed for more territory. Strange thing was that no one had ever seen their leader.
Babydoll frowned as she looked over the information. “This is too clean for it to be the work of another gang. They would just go in and fight. And it doesn’t feel like a mafia or other syndicate’s work. They would not really be interested in the coal mine anyways, except as a place to run smuggling in and out of the FAN. And they probably already have routes for that.”
“Yeah, but a corporate job makes even less sense,” Sexkitten countered. “Coal is still used in some places, sure, but not on an industrial scale. People use it to heat their houses in winter, if they are off-grid, and I think there are some chemical companies that use the stuff, for precursor compounds or whatever the science name is. Maybe the odd museum piece train or steamboat kept going for tourist money. But still, I don’t see why anyone would want to start up an old coal mine.”
I frowned at that. “They wouldn’t. If there was only coal in that mine. Magic coming back did more than change people and animals, you know. Might be magic changed the coal, somehow, or they somehow found out that there was something more valuable than coal hidden in that mine. Assuming the mine is the actual reason for this, at all.”
“What are you getting at, Boss?” Shadowgirl asked.
“The target might not be the mine, but the gang. I keep going back to the promised payout on the back end. I got to play around with TacNet software a little during the beta, and it is powerful stuff. You usually only see it in military units or high-end corporate strike teams. It isn’t illegal, or even restricted, but most people don’t have the tech or organization to really use it.”
“How so?” Twilight frowned. Probably only a little upset that I knew more than her about something software-related.
“Because to use the TacNet software, you have to meet certain criteria. First, everyone in the group needs to have the software. Twilight, I don’t know whether you would be able to join in, as is. Probably would need to rework things to play nice with your Living Persona.”
Twilight sighed. “Yeah, I have to translate normal programs. Could probably thread it, if I had something to work off of, but I might need to dip deeper into my submersion for that. I’ll chat with the network I joined to see about that.”
I nodded, and continued. “Next, everyone in the TacNet needs to be contributing sensor data to the network. How much sensor data depends on the rating of the program. You need to provide two ‘channels’ per point of rating in the network, and they need to be applicable to the task at hand. Geiger counter routed would count as a sensor channel only if it was somehow helping with things. If you have a simrig, you can count natural senses as channels, assuming that they come into play. Smell and touch don’t normally count, but hearing, normal vision, those of us with Low-light, and so on would. If you got cybereyes and ears, then those sensor systems count. Worn sensors, like my glasses, would also add in. Drones can only add a number of sensors to the link equal to their Sensor rating.
“The bit about the senses being applicable means that Babydoll, for instance, would need to be either in the meat, or working through multiple drones to count as part of the net, and Twilight wouldn’t count unless she was with us in the meat, and the net wouldn’t help her with hacking at all. That said, if we managed to get at least rating 2 tacsofts? So long as we had at least four people adding four channels each to the network, everyone in the net would get a bonus to pretty much everything.
“The flip side, of course, is that you need a minimum of three people for the tacnet to function. Also, the bonus you get depends on the rating of the net and how many people you have. Bonus is the number of people in the net minus two, capped at the tacsoft rating.”
Berzerker frowned. “But wouldn’t a network like that be easy to hack?”
Twilight shook her head. “Depends on the setup. I assume it can be done decentralized or centralized?” She looked my way, and I nodded agreement. The hacker took a breath, and continued. “Decentralized, then it would depend on each person’s individual commlinks. That’s less secure, but you don’t have a single point of failure. If you centralize it, by slaving everyone’s commlink to one node, then you only need to worry about that node getting hacked. But if it drops out for any reason, such as jamming or just too much distance cutting off the signal, then the whole net goes down, rather than just one person dropping from the net.”
Sexkitten breathed out slowly. “Well, it is a good thing that we all picked up those new ‘Singularity Battle Buddy’ commlinks you suggested, Babydoll.”
“Yes,” Babydoll nodded happily. “Hardened against EMPs and armored against damage, and they come with Rating 5 Response and Signal. Add in a Rating 5 Firewall and operating System, and they’re pretty much the best commlink you can get outside of actual military hacking and rigging gear. The high stats make it more secure, enables more active connections, and lets you use more programs at once without degrading processor speed.”
“Back on topic,” Shadowgirl interjected. “Someone who has access to that software typically has enough money that they wouldn’t need to be hiring out Shadowmen to simply go try and convince some squatters to move out of a mine, right?”
“Exactly,” I nodded. “Which means either all this is a distraction, designed to pull attention away from something else, or we’re going into a bad situation with no information. Best case, in that instance, is if we’re being used to create an excuse for something coming later. Worst case, we’re the excuse for an ‘intervention’ coming down on the site.”
Babydoll frowned. “So, is this targeted at us? Or are we just caught in the middle?”
“They came looking for us expressly,” Berserker said. “That means we’re a target, even if we aren’t the target.”
I took a long breath. Just sitting and talking about it wasn’t going to change anything. “Twilight, get diving in the Matrix. Find out anything you can on the mine, the people squatting there, and who might be wanting to make a go of it. Babydoll, I want the blimps in the air and mapping the area. I doubt we’ll get so lucky as to find people camped out and waiting to ambush us like last time, but you never know.”
“And the rest of us, Boss?” Sexkitten asked.
“We’re going to start checking with contacts, see if any of them have heard anything. Berzerker, I want you to talk to that bookie friend of yours, especially. See if he can remember anything about who contacted him.”
Suddenly, Twilight went very still. “Uh, Berzerker, your contact’s name is Tom Hall, right? Bookie, frequents the Silver Charm Club in Auburn?”
Berzerker frowned. “Yeah, that’s him. Why, what’s up?”
Twilight brought up a news broadcast, showing a building that was currently very much on fire. “Might be nothing. Might be coincidence, but it seems like the Halloweeners went on one of their mad killing sprees down in Auburn. A couple buildings got hit, including the Silver Charm Club. They set it on fire. Witnesses say they got into an argument with a known bookie named Tom Hall, and shot him, before they started the fires. Now, they’re rioting.”
Berzerker bit back a curse. “Damn it. Tom would take money from anyone, so long as it was good. Everyone knew that. But I thought he was smarter than to go pulling tricks on nutjobs like a bike gang that dresses up like fucking clowns.”
“Assuming he pulled a trick,” I said, darkly, “and wasn’t the one getting a trick pulled on him. The timing is suspicious as hell. I don’t like it. Maybe it has nothing to do with us, but my bet is that someone knew we were going to talk to him, and decided to arrange an accident before that happened.”
“What do we do, Master?” Sexkitten asked. “Drop the job and pretend it never happened? Go investigating this bookie’s death?”
“None of us are real investigators, Kitten.” I shook my head, slowly. “And we can’t drop the job. Not unless we’re ready to drop everything, and probably move to another sprawl. If this was directed at us, and we have to assume it was, then this is a message. They know who we are, they know our contacts, and they have no problem arranging accidents for people. Someone has decided we’re a problem, and they’ve made a trap just for us.”
Shadowgirl sighed. “And let me guess, the best thing to do with this is going to be to spring the trap, fight our way out the other side, and hope that we either find who set this up so that we can explain our displeasure, or cause enough damage that they decide not to try this kind of thing again?”
I nodded. “Unfortunately, yes. There’s no way we’re going to get through this without running and hiding, or fighting our way through things. And I believe we’ve all put too much work into this to give up, turn tail, and run. Which means we need to fight our way through.”
Sexkitten nodded. “So, to fight our way through the trap, we first have to spring the trap. Which means we need to find these ‘squatters’, and decide how to deal with them. Assuming we’re given a chance to decide, and things don’t just blow up in our face.”