Starting to feel a bit better. Enough that I can try and write some. Thanks for all your well-wishes, and hopefully this is as far as that goes. Anyways, back to the word mines.
Chapter 78: Loose Ends
Back on the surface, Twilight was happily ripping through sixteen commlinks. She had to work quick with the ones that were on fire, but these links were all the ‘Battle Buddy Basic’ models, which were basically what the military would give grunts for secure commlinks. Military hackers and riggers got better, of course, but the basic version was still armored against damage, designed to go through all the abuse that men in the field might subject it to, and keep working. Sure, getting into them took more work, but no one was alive or conscious enough to respond to alerts, so she didn’t need to bother with subtlety.
She did have to give these idiots some credit, though. The links were clean of any personal information or data. The SINs on them were decent fakes, but clearly fake. There was 3k nucred on each of the links. No account connected, preloaded as certified credits. Enough that they could do basic spending while on mission without accessing their accounts. Smart. She stole all of it, and set it to distribute to the team once they were above ground. Another 8k per person would help cover some of the costs for this mission. After all, missiles weren’t cheap, and who knew how many rounds the others were using down in the mine.
Babydoll’s voice came through the digital connection. “The first flamethrower vehicle just caught fire. Probably from the damage to the weapon’s fuel tank. What about you? Anything spicy on the links?”
“No, just some credits uploaded from certified credsticks and fake SINs that are not worth talking about. Decent antivirus and encryption software, some standard user programs… ooh, and we have some Tac-Net Software, rating 2! I can try and crack and copy it, to distribute to the team. Would need to spend time patching it every month, to keep it up to date, but that’s an option. You wouldn’t be able to use me as the center of the network, though, so you’d be more vulnerable to hacks. The software is incompatible with the Resonance. Too interconnected with all the normal devices. Thoughts?”
Babydoll paused a moment, considering that. “Honestly? I’d say leave it, but let bossman make the final call. The tac-net is something that looks nice to have, but it relies a lot on us being all together. This gig shows that sometimes that isn’t possible. I’m worried that it might become a crutch we rely on, instead of boosting our skills.”
“Fair point. I’ve been meaning to get some more combat-orientated complex forms, as well. An Attack or Black Hammer complex form would give me additional options when facing other hackers.”
“Pros and cons?”
“Attack is generally useful against any agents, hackers, spiders, and TMs. It would stun TMs, and knock out hardware for the others. Maybe bricking their equipment. But it won’t hit a normal hacker or spider in their brain, so it counts as soft touch, like using the SnS rounds.
“Black Hammer is strictly for biological targets. Hackers, spiders, riggers, other TMs like me. Hits to the brain, does Stun against cold sim users, but can overflow to Physical if you hit them enough. Against hot sim users, it does straight Physical. Either way, hitting them with it lets you keep the connection open so you can back-hack them and get their secrets. There is a nonlethal version called Blackout that just does Stun, and doesn’t overflow. Extra bonus of the Black IC attacks is that someone who survives it might get lingering effects when they’re in the Matrix. But that’s only if you’re going hard on it.”
Babydoll chuckled. “Honestly, Twilight? I think you’d be better off with the Attack form. Grab a Blackout later on, if you want, since it is always good to have options. But if you really need a hammer to hit a hacker in the brain, can’t you use one of your sprites for it?”
Twilight considered that as she finished rooting through the commlinks, and debated threading a Track complex form to follow the satellite link back to the source. No, too risky without backup, and time to do it right. Had to assume they’d have military-grade protections (and IC) on the other side, given what they’d shown off so far. “Good point. Attack would buy me time to whistle up a sprite, if I didn’t have one already. I could also go for a Shield complex form, which will help defend me against attacks.”
“Yeah, having a basic attack, and working on not getting hit sounds like a better plan than loading up on the strictly-lethal options. We’re not exactly a wetwork team, after all.”
“Hmm. If this job pays off, karma-wise, like the normal ones we’ve had, I’ll have enough Karma saved up to get both of those, and raise them to Rating 2. Not spectacular, but I can thread them higher, if needed, and start boosting them later.”
“Sounds like a plan. Just popped two guys climbing out of the second flamethrower vehicle. They apparently did not like being on fire, so I ended their subscription service to existence.”
“Glad to hear it. According to the biomonitors, all others are unconscious, except for one that died on impact when you sent the command vehicle into the tree, and another that’s burned to death. Still have three unconscious in the tree that might be useful for interrogation later.”
Suddenly, a pulse went down the satellite link from wherever it was linked to. Auto-injectors fired in all sixteen unconscious men. Even the dead ones. The biomonitors quickly informed her that they all were injected with cyanide. Not the deadliest toxin out there, but still deadly, especially when it was injected directly into their bloodstream. Their commlinks decided now was a great time to reformat themselves to factory settings, erasing what little information was on them. And then the satellite link bricked itself.
“DREK!” she cursed. “Whoever was on the other end of that satellite link just snipped all the loose ends. Cyanide injectors went off in all of them, their commlinks erased themselves, and the satellite link is an expensive paperweight, now. Whoever did this did NOT want things coming back to bite them.”
“That is… concerning,” Babydoll said, drily. “This wasn’t exactly a fly-by-night operation. That’s a lot of nucred down the drain for those operatives and their gear.”
“Yes, but that still tells us something,” Twilight said, her thoughts still working through the possibilities. “I think we can count out the bugs. This isn’t their style, from what we’ve seen, and these corpses have a bunch of cyberware, except for two: the one I pegged as a leader, and one who might be a mage. So, we don’t have to worry about becoming ‘hosts’.”
“I get that,” Babydoll said, working through things in her own mind. “I think we can also strike off official corporate or military involvement. Even if they were black ops, they wouldn’t throw away all this nucred, when they could have a lawyer explain why whatever cover they have is perfectly legal, and even spin it as a terror attack against them.”
“So, we’re dealing with someone who has deep pockets, but is more worried about exposure than losing people and funds?”
“Sounds like it,” Babydoll said. “You know, my ‘News Media’ knowledge skill is pinging on this. Whoever is behind this must have a public persona that they want to keep clean. Or clean-ish. Like how Governor Havenbrack has been connected to different hate groups over the years, but no one has been able to connect him directly to any of the crimes or other shit they do. He just happens to be one of their favorite people, but doesn’t publicly say or do anything that can get him in too much trouble in the press.”
“I get what you’re saying. The person or persons behind this are willing to throw money down on eliminating large groups of ‘undesirables’, but they don’t want to deal with the fallout of public backlash, if they were linked to it. Even those Humanis assholes make sure to separate themselves from ‘random acts of proactive self-defense’ by humans against ‘aggressive metahumans’. But there’s a big difference between thugs beating an ork to death on the street and what is effectively a military strike force. Even if someone owned the media, that would cause them tons of problems if it got out.”
“So, we’re looking at something like those rumors from back during the Night of Rage, with the Council of Five, or whatever they were called, that were the group who supposedly set off the events that caused all those killings.”
“Or that terror group that took down the Sears Tower a few days after that business. Mix of magic and tech explosions took the thing down, with over 26 thousand inside. According to the Matrix, the whole place is haunted, over thirty years later. And no one ever caught the ones responsible. Just matrix chatter that the group was called Alamos 20k, or something like that.”
Babydoll considered that for a bit. “Think we’ll be able to backtrack it to anyone?”
“Not likely. They were thorough in covering their tracks. Which means our rep isn’t going completely under the radar. We might need to worry about follow-ups, or other attempts by these guys to try and take us down, but if they were going to go at us directly, they would have. I think we gave enough of a show of force that they will think twice about challenging us directly from now on, unless we go investigating them too much. Not quite as good as feeding them their own gun as we explain their poor life choices, but it is something, at least.”
“A live and let live kind of deal, huh, except both sides hope the other bites it, but aren’t willing to open themselves up to the potential damage that would come from doing it themselves?”
“Basically. Not exactly the best situation for us to be in, but I like it a lot better than any of the other options for us, right now. We can’t track them, like we are, and we don’t have enough information to be an effective threat to them, even if we found them. Best we can do is reach out to contacts and warn them about what we found. Tell them to watch out for jobs that look too good to be true, and always make sure they have an ace in the hole.”
“At the very least, make sure that they always have an escape plan, in case things turn nasty,” Babydoll agreed.
Twilight sighed as she came back to her body. There was no point hanging out in the Matrix with the enemies all dead and their links wasted. She already got the money from them, so there wasn’t much more for her to do. Babydoll smirked at her. “Hey, at least it was relatively simple and easy on our end. We hit them before they could even properly react. Made things much easier. Much as I hate to admit it, that laser or the machine gun could have done some real damage to my babies if they hadn’t died so quickly.”
“Something to consider, then. I don’t know if you have processing space on the drones, but you could add in some Defense autosofts. Would at least let you go full defense if you see something really nasty coming. Like you said, working on not getting hit in the first place beats a lot of other options.”
“Unfortunately, drone systems are usually fairly limited. Not quite as easy to upgrade their matrix abilities as strapping on a new commlink. Pilot programs are a bitch and a half to get working right on a drone, since so much of it depends on being fitted to the individual drone, or drone type.”
“Well, something to think on for the future then.” Twilight stretched in her seat. “So, how long before the others come back topside?”