1/10/77
Abandoned Sixer Compound, Heywood District
Night City, California
Panam Palmer
-
Panam hadn't spent that much time at the camp that morning, as much as she wanted to. She wanted to curl up on her bed, even if the large hunk of meat and cybernetics that was V was still slumbering under her covers. He was a heavy sleeper, but also a manic one apparently. He wasn't neatly tucked in bed, his feet and arms lingered out from underneath, the blanket covering his torso whilst he had forced a pillow over his head. Anything else, her other pillows, the smaller blanket over her main one, the small teddy she had been given from her mother, all of them on the floor.
If he wasn't crippled, she might have light-heartedly slapped him on the shoulder for being such a violent sleeper. However, he was still unable to walk and going through his own personal issues, bullying him for his sleeping habits was the last thing she wanted to do. What she wanted, was something he didn't need at that very moment.
However, he had helped in his own way. He'd woke up not much longer after she had, he'd shoved a small shard in her hand and muttered 'supply den' in a half-hearted grumble before he went back to sleep. She'd brushed a hand through his head, the back of her hand gently stroking his chin before she'd left the tent and wandered through the sun for her a quick breakfast before she'd gathered Scorpion and Mitch in her truck.
The way into Night City had been quiet, the trio readying themselves to scout the den out for spare parts as they reached the city. The Warhorse had managed to get through the morning traffic well enough, and as soon as they managed to get into the suburbs of Heywood, they had gained more freedom on the road to drive quicker and more violently, like they would on the desert plains.
"What did V say about this place?" Scorpion had asked from the back of the truck. "Anything about scavs or gangers?"
Panam shook his head. "The shard mentioned it being owned by Arasaka, and it used to be guarded by Sixers. Other than that, any other dangers that we should be expecting by now. Nothing we can't handle."
Mitch scoffed. "Hate this place."
"You hate every place that isn't the desert." Scorpion shot back. "You know what, anything that isn't your tent, you hate."
"Ain't that the truth. Think I hate this damn city more than the Sandbox."
Scorpion harrumphed. "Shit, it's not that bad. I'd take this place over being shot at by tanks in the middle of Arizona in the summer."
Panam had grown used to the pair, the former tank drivers had dealt with their issues, even if they occasionally popped up from time to time. They had been linked together for so long in their service as tank commanders, they'd often said to her when they'd returned from their tour that they felt connected in more ways than one. They had shared experiences, shared nightmares which she had spent many sleepless nights listening to their screams. Exasperated descriptions of neural damage that permanently etched the memories into their minds, a constant reminder of the fact that war never changed.
Neither did being a nomad, the constant driving from state to state, nomad market to nomad market. The only things that changed were the locale and the people, the ones that died in transit or were unlucky to die outside the camp that just disappeared. There was a rare few that managed to die in the camp, died surrounded by loved ones, buried and remembered as a nomad by the ones that remained.
Those melancholy thoughts had become more common when she had lost her mother, lost Jonah, lost hope of ever finding V as the camp grew worse. The camp was bleeding resources, and the security (or lack thereof) was becoming more a concern. Her actions (as well as V's) had made the Raffen Shiv worse than they'd ever been, digging through dust and sand to look for the Aldecaldo camp that they knew was nearby. They needed supplies and they needed to move.
V helped in his own way, as his intel finally led her to the burnt-down entrance to the stockyard of the compound. Cars and equipment crates were flipped up and over, bodies remained in gruesome states of decay as the windows of the nearby apartment blocks that surrounded the stockyard was boarded up. As the truck parked up just inside, the trio of nomads got out slowly, taking in the dead battlefield.
Mitch looked around, taking the damage in. "V did this?"
"Shard said it was V and a friend on a gig, something like that," Panam muttered, taking out the SMG that V had given her. "Let's check this place out, he said there was some stuff we could take, and we need anything we can get."
The three of them marched forward, Mitch and Scorpion holding two similar models of rifle as they entered the main vehicle bay of the building. Militech armoured vans flipped on their side as tools and equipment were splayed on the floor, unorganised chaos of items and wreckage as they scanned through to find anything they could. Before long, they heard a small commotion come from the nearby office as the three soon ducked underneath the window of the room. A language they didn't understand, something that sounded vaguely Japanese was reverbing through the walls before the door opened.
Two guys walked through, clad in fancy jackets with a bright red tiger stitched into the back. Scorpion had rushed forward, ploughing into them with no remorse or mercy as one was thrown straight into the wall before a series of gunshots rang out. The sound was unpleasant, the echo remained to pound against Panam's eardrums for a while before one more soldier ran through, late to the violence before he was absolutely powerslammed into the concrete floor by Mitch.
Panam stood up, her rifle dropping to her stomach as the conversation stopped. Scorpion had forged ahead, running upstairs and clearing it out before he'd returned a few moments later. Mitch had covered the rest of the ground floor, scanning through the office and utility room before Panam had even approached the one room they hadn't searched through. The door was locked, but the building plans on the shard had registered it as a large stockroom of sorts, holding loot that would most definitely be appreciated.
"Weren't any keys, were there?" Panam asked before started fiddling with the electronic lock.
Mitch and Scorpion grunted at each other before they stood in front of the door. In one slick, synchronised movement their hands had tightened and cracked the hinges and the locks of the door, sliding it away and soon off the hinges. Panam had walked through the doorway without care, followed by the two former tankies. Looking around, Panam had definitely seen why V had handed her that shard. The room was filled with storage crates, stacked up on shelves and on top of themselves before Scorpion had managed to crack one open. A small cold fog slithered out from underneath the lid.
Sets of last generation TechWarrior operating systems, perfect replacements for old parts that were going out of use for the more heavily cyberized members of the clan. Other crates had arms, legs, neural patchwork and synthetic fibres that would easily be put to good use in the right hands of the right ripperdoc. Some boxes contained armaments, useful for security but not enough to keep the Raffens away for good.
"Well shit, V was right."
Panam shrugged. "We need something heavier, something that's gonna tell the Raffen to shit, or get buried in the sand."
Mitch looked as if he were about to gawp at her. "You realise, if this is a good score, the only heavier we get is by raiding a corpo convoy out in the desert. There's a chance we could get some bad attention to us that we don't need."
Scorpion looked to his brother in arms. "She's right though. We've been drifting around on what we had in the stash, resting on our laurels that we weren't ready for what happened on Granite Pass. Raffen Shiv, road collapses, car breakdowns. Now, we might be acting like shit is fine but we're not. It might be the only way we can force a move."
Mitch shook his head. "We'd be going against Saul, against the clan leader. I know V and Panam would like that but…"
"But nothing," Panam stated. "It's either we raid a corp, whether it's Militech, Arasaka or Kang Tao or whatever military corpo is around or we die in the desert like some old coot who's too stubborn to quit. We have to raid a corpo, and we have to do it soon."
-
Oil Fields, Northern Night City
Rogue AmendiaresThe drive out to the north of the city had been one that Rogue had not made very often. She barely left Watson unless she absolutely had to, and the furthest she would have to go was Heywood or Corpo Plaza. Having to negotiate with some upstart gangoons that had found themselves on her shit-list, or some corpo that needed help that absolutely deigned to have her attention, she abhorred having to ever leave Watson, let alone leaving the Afterlife.
The fact that possibility of finding out whatever the Bartmoss signal contained had gotten her out of her shell, and by the shell, the area of which she controlled to the point where she could walk through an alley of scavvers or Maelstromers and not have to have Squama worrying for her safety. The drive up north, as had been pointed out by Shaitan and Squama was towards some oil fields that was one of the last places that actually had the black crude still in American land.
So, the trio of Rogue, Shaitan and Squama had all piled into Rogue's Chevillon Thrax sedan as Shaitan took the wheel. They hadn't been in much of a rush, which ended up forcing Rogue into the position of actually having to think about things she didn't want to.
V, the upstart kid with a stiff upper lip and the silver arm replica of Johnny's own. She thought he was smart enough to not fight Smasher, but for once, she was wrong. Wasn't her fault, though.
Then her thoughts had somehow fallen into the pit of despair that housed every thought about Johnny Silverhand. That rockerboy with an ego the size of the goddamn universe, an attitude that could fuck over everyone in the blink of an eye. She never knew how Alt could have ever put up with his bullshit, especially when he got to the point where he was downing tequila, uppers and downers at every hour of the day. As annoying and useless he could be, she missed that bastard. He had a heart, he had balls of steel to say whatever the fuck he wanted and he didn't care.
How Denny, Nancy and Henry ever got along with him due to their own issues was a mystery. Kerry was his most loyal follower; he would have followed Johnny to the ends of the earth before the chrome-rock band's leader had gone off the deep end. Kerry went solo, from what she knew. Samurai's music wasn't exactly her taste, neither was Kerry's solo stuff. He'd become a rockstar, he'd gone corpo, shit on every single thing Johnny and Samurai ever stood for.
She'd had a list of those she'd lost, the people she tried not to think about. Santiago, Johnny, Alt, and now she had to add Nyx and V. She barely knew the kid, but he was good and he didn't bullshit her. That was what she could say, at least the kindest thing she could think of about the kid.
"Aye, Madame Rogue?"
"What's up, Squama?" Rogue replied. "You okay?"
The large Haitian nodded. "I been thinkin' if looking for Bartmoss is gonna help us, you know, regarding the issue."
The silver borg turned to her briefly, before focusing on the road again. "The issue? What issue?"
"An issue called Adam fucking Smasher," Rogue grunted as they drove past the large oil derricks, planted firmly in the ground. "That piece of shit has been walkin' the earth for too long, killed too many people, he needs to go."
Shaitan clicked his tongue, turning off the road and onto gravel tracks. "Gonna be a big issue trying to find him, and I'm not even thinking of trying to kill that bastard."
"I don't care."
"I know you don't, but unless you have a death wish like every other dumb fuck that tried to fight him, and I am including V in that group, he's invincible." Shaitan grimaced. "You can't fight someone like that. He's cybered out of his ass, no different to me, and then they wrapped him up in some Dai-Oni Power Armour. I can barely fight him, and I was actually having to try."
Rogue crossed her arms, huffing. "I've been waiting for years to kill that bastard."
"Hasn't every single guy whoever had to look at his face."
"Shaitan, you don't what he's done. You have a fraction of an idea of what he's capable of. I'll kill him if it's the last thing I ever have to do."
Squama had been silent in the middle of the two solo's argument, sliding back into his seat as the silver-skinned cyborg and the female mercenary continued discussing what Smasher was. A cyborg in power armour, wearing human skin like he was attending a masked ball. Some psychopathic soldier, with an attitude that hated whatever looked like it was more meat than metal. Squama hadn't ever laid his eyes on the cyber-soldier (from what Rogue knew), but he had most definitely heard Rogue talk about him, using every possible curse she could have thought (in English or otherwise) to state how much she despised Adam Smasher.
The drive soon ended, as the trio got out of the sedan. A small metal shack in the middle of the oil field abandoned and surrounded by trash. The smell of oil was pungent, lingering and languishing in the air, similar to the smell of the rotting waste heaps outside the city further northwest. Squama remained by the car, heavy rifle in his hand as Rogue and Shaitan approached the shack.
The ramshackle hut was dark, soon fixed as soon as Shaitan's eyes lit up and illuminated the one-room building. The metal of the walls was rusting, the steel grey malting and sloughing, grey material turning brown and dark red as the shack looked more and more likely to collapse right around them. All that was left inside the hut was a small wooden desk, the black wood rotting away as the pair approached.
The metal creaked and moaned, as Rogue opened the only unlocked drawer to find a holopad. She'd pressed her hand against the screen, only to reveal a lock screen with a ten second time limit being the first thing visible. Lines of code would appear every two seconds, and then the lock screen and timer would reset. Rogue tried to open it, followed by Shaitan even jack-wiring the device whereupon he received a nasty shock for his attempts at unlocking it.
The holopad started blaring before the code stopped running across the screen, a message running across the screen.
"NICE TRY, BUT UNLESS YOU ARE WHO I THINK YOU ARE, YOU WON'T UNLOCK THIS BABY. YOU GUYS WHO LIVE IN REALSPACE, MOVE SO SLOW. IS GRASS GREEN, DO BIRDS FLY, DO CATS EAT BATS, DO RATS EAT NATS. SM XX"