Chapter Sixty Two
September 17th, 2077
Night City, Northern California
Coast View
*BANG!*
*BANG!*
*BANG!*
The staccato of Panam's HMG muffled any other noise within Vi's periphery. She could hear its reverberating staccato bounce around her head as the convoy stormed down Pacifica's main highway. Barricades and other miscellaneous objects placed in their path were swept aside by angular metal tombstones in the lead vehicles.
Nothing short of a fucking nuke was stopping this convoy.
And yet the Rogue AI persisted, throwing everything into the convoy's path. Vi could scarcely believe how many lives were lost in the opening phase as a sixteen-vehicle ground convoy turned the corner at Olympic Boulevard. She watched civilians mindlessly throw themselves into the leading bulldozer, sending limbs and bodies bouncing off the metal tombstone.
It was the kind of carnage that would leave Bloodhound, Siren, Blackwatch, and Aldecaldo alike tossing in their sleep.
Vi unleashed a burst of .50 cal into a convenience store, cutting down a middle-aged man a second away from firing his Militech AT Launcher. His body joined a chorus of other dead Voodoo Boys and militia butchered by the Aldecaldo convoy.
Everything was getting blown apart-concrete walls, apartment buildings, cars, men, women, children. Vi felt the bile crawling up her stomach after watching a Ranger in another vehicle gun down a child running at the convoy with two grenades. There was a slight hesitation in the gunner's movements, but self-preservation trumped all moral platitudes tonight.
Vi felt besieged, disoriented even, and a passing glance towards Panam revealed a similar disposition.
Everything was on the table, and Vi had already gunned a teenage girl with the .50-cal before unleashing a full burst upon crowds of men and women charging at the convoy.
"This is insane!" One of the accompanying Rangers cried out from the backseat. A handcuffed the back of his helmet and sent his head bouncing off the car's shaking frame.
"Shut up and fight Adam's!" Senior Ranger Caleb Wozniack ordered while reloading his Copperhead. The comms channel was a buzz with target call-outs and reference points.
Vi was so caught up with engaging a stationary technical that she almost missed the radio channel lighting up with urgency.
"Rocket! Left side!" The warning came out mere seconds before a missile crossed Vi's HUD and slammed into an adjacent structure.
Her instincts brimmed to life, and she swung the HMGs barrel towards the rocketeer. She fired a single burst that imploded the man's chest and sent him sprawling backward with an empty rocket tube.
"Shit, that was close!" The Aldecaldo radio channel became alight with communique between vehicle crews.
"How much longer to the rendezvous!?"
"Two miles to go!"
"Longest two miles of our fucking lives!"
"Clear the fucking comms!" Panam switched to a different frequency just as Mitch ordered the other vics to maintain radio discipline.
"Chamber, we're rolling in hot along MSR Neptune. How are the Mercs doing?"
"They've fallen back into the hotel and are hanging on by a thread." The urgency in Chamber's voice was plain to hear. "Combat strength is fifty percent, but that number won't last much longer. I need your convoy to roll into the main courtyard and start glassing the adjacent structures."
"Roger that, I'll put my boys on free fire." Panam paused, trading glances with Vi out the corner of her eye. "How's our boy doing?
" He's fine, Panam." Chamber relayed. "Stay focused on your mission. Cyrus and Eliza will get out just fine."
"Just keep me updated," Vi spoke up for not only herself but Panam as well.
" I will, Chamber out." Just then, a Viper slid overhead and strafed a mob of armed Voodoo Boys manning a makeshift barricade. The roadblock came apart at the seams, with great chunks of flesh and steel flying into the air. Blood splashed, and limbs flew for what seemed like miles before the autocannon ceased, and the helicopter's shadow passed onward.
What had been a well-maintained roadblock was now a smoking ruin of blood and steel.
The convoy's lead bulldozer smashed through the remains and hung a right onto the now infamous MSR Neptune. The street was filled with the dead or dying, and almost all of them were either Voodoo Boys or Pacifica civilians.
It was armageddon, plain and simple.
"I really hope all this carnage isn't for nothing." Vi sighted a Voodoo Boy exiting a torn-up apartment building with a launcher braced against his right shoulder. Sure enough, the man practically ran up to them. He ducked behind a car and was seconds away from firing his rocket when Vi unleashed about a half dozen round into him.
The .50 cal bullets pierced right through the man, slicing through the car and cutting through the apartment walls behind him. A brilliant flash momentarily overwhelmed the turret's optic, and before Vi knew it, a concussive blast erupted from the apartment building's ground floor.
*BOOM!*
Smoke and fire exploded onto the street, throwing dozens of militia to the ground and enveloping an Aldecaldo Archer. The driver swerved to the left, running over a cluster of debris and barely keeping his vehicle from turning on its side.
"What the fuck was that?!" The driver cried on the comms channel.
"Must have been an ammo cache," Mitch commented. "Good shooting, Vi."
The convoy pushed on, weaving between roadblocks and overturned vehicles until the lead vehicle spotted a plume of smoke marking Romeo Six-one. Mitch took command of the situation, ordering the lead bulldozer to cut a path through the swarming militia and establish a perimeter around the beleaguered Mage Company.
" Rangers, prepare to disembark!" Vi disconnected from the Archer's remote HMG and grabbed her Ajax. She leaned her weight against the passenger door and gazed out the bulletproof window with silent anticipation.
Panam cursed as a burst of gunfire slammed into the chassis, and she reached for the center console, manipulating the Archer's HMG to auto-engage hostiles. The HMG snapped onto a pair of Voodoo Boys and fired six rounds into their meaty bodies.
"V?" The Merc glanced over her shoulder and found Panam's features etched with worry. "Be careful out there."
"We'll be fine." V tried to push as much assurance into her voice as possible, but it faltered underneath the storm of hell outside. "Keep that gun barking, and we'll be back home in no time."
Neither of them knew where this night was heading, and the sheer brutality already on display was sure to attract the wrong kind of attention.
"Ready!" V's heartbeat accelerated to the tenth degree, and her mind pushed out all troubling thoughts. Her sandevistan roared to life, and time slowed to a noticeable crawl.
She would survive this night, and by god, so would Cyrus and Panam.
" Go, go, go!" Trooper carriers threw open their doors, unleashing the burning fury of Aldecaldo Rangers upon the Voodoo Boys besieging Cypher's Mercenaries.
Vi jumped from the passenger seat, and a glimmer of metal caught her eye. She ducked beneath the sharp edge of a machete and drove her shoulder into the Voodoo Boys' gut. She forced him onto his back and fired a burst of gunfire into the man's face, splitting his face and blasting a hole through the back of his skull.
Movement and the sound of beating footsteps drew V's attention, and she swung her Ajax around to deal lethal retribution when a voice called out to her.
"Friendly!" It was Conley, one of Cyrus's newest Bloodhounds.
Her eyes trailed to the rest of her team, and they widened with shock as she registered a severely wounded Bloodhound being carried on a stretcher by two of their number.
Leopard fretted over the wounded Bloodhound in visible distress, and Vi's heart froze when her gaze registered the familiar red marking running down the side of his helmet.
It was Falcon.
And he didn't look good.
The Nomads came through.
Falcon never doubted the Aldecaldos tenacity, but it would be a lie to say he didn't once question their willingness to drive into the mother of all kill zones based on settling their debt to Cypher.
Even as his vision faded and his body grew cold, Falcon couldn't help but be proud of what he and his siblings had accomplished.
In a mere few months, the Bloodhounds had gone from selfish mercenaries to paragons of order beholden to Cypher's will.
Everything that was asked of them they'd done without hesitation.
Every night was spent hunting Night City's array of bloodthirsty gangsters and merciless killers without pity.
Falcon didn't doubt for a second that their legacy as Cypher's Chosen would forever be cemented in the annals of history.
It was a shame he wouldn't be there to see it.
"MEDIC!"
Leopard's panicked cry was a foreign and terrifying thing that he'd never once heard before in his life. The tempered XO Falcon had come to know was replaced with a sister desperately trying to save her brother from an early grave.
"Take… h… to th… CCP!" Falcon felt the wind brush across his pale face, but his fraying nerves numbed the sensation.
He was bleeding out.
A Vanyon sniper managed to catch his team unawares at the worst possible moment, and by the luck of the draw, Falcon was his first target. The bullet slashed into his armored sternum and cut through flesh and bone not inches from his heart.
It was a miracle he was still alive, let alone conscious, but he could feel himself fighting for every breath.
"Get… t there a… fight!" There was a brief but no less viral argument between Leopard and Conley.
"I'm… n… leaving him!" The desperate hands covering his wound slipped away, and another foreign set of fingers replaced them.
"Let the medics do their… ing job!" A snarl of discontent echoed from Leopard's throat as the Bloodhounds burst into Blackwatch CCP inside the hotel lobby.
They placed him on a makeshift gurney amongst a dozen other Blackwatch soldiers staving off the reaper. Falcon could see the crown of Weaver's head shift left to right as his hands desperately applied medical aid to his wound.
"Promise me!" Umeki snapped, taking his hand in a vice grip even as medical technicians scrambled around them.
"I promise." Falcon tried to give his blood sister a reassuring smile, something to settle her ailing nerves even as the darkness consumed his vision.
It died with him.
Weaver and a combat medic from Mage Company tending to the critically wounded Bloodhound felt his body go slack. The new blood reached for Falcon's neck, silently praying that a pulse still pounded within his brother's bloody frame.
There was none to be found.
"What's his status? " Conley had raised Eagle on the comm, but she fell silent along with many of her fellow Bloodhounds.
When no answer came, Eagle's desperate voice echoed across the radio channel. "What's his status?!"
Dragov, the ever-present beacon of stability and calm, reluctantly answered.
"He's dead…."
At the sound of that word, all radio traffic stopped.
Silence reigned.
"… Falcon's dead, sir."
Chamber felt her Spartan freeze in place, and his curled fist remained buried inside the shattered chassis of a Centaur standing between them and the Rogue AI's data fortress.
They were so close to the end, so close to bringing all this madness to a final conclusion with as minimal casualties as possible.
This campaign was short-lived yet brutal in its context.
The number of casualties their victory would bring tempered any sense of celebration within those taking part in the operation. The Blackwatch soldiers, Bloodhounds, and Sirens alone accounted for over six thousand kills, many of which were strewn all across Pacifica.
Even more would join the afterlife once they took this Rogue offline, and every Voodoo Boy or civilian attached to its network would flatline in an instant.
They would all have to get off-grid once this op was complete; tonight's consequences could last a lifetime, and the heat it would bring down wasn't something that Chamber wanted to contemplate.
Regret and sorrow became a familiar companion to the Spartan's otherwise stout heart.
"Chamber?" Cyrus reached out to his AI with an even voice that betrayed his inner turmoil. "Can you confir-"
"He's gone, Cyrus," Chamber answered with haste. "Nothing we can do."
The Spartan ripped his hand from its metal enclosure and stepped over the Centaur's broken chassis. There was no roar of anger or cry of grief from Cyrus, only a silent contemplation of the price paid to remove this monument of madness from the earth.
Eliza kept her own counsel, but she undoubtedly recognized the emotional turmoil her fellow Spartan was going through. She sustained that same stain of failure a thousand times, with every Siren dead under her command.
It was the burden every commander endured.
It was one that Cyrus would adapt to.
No matter how much he hated it.
So they stood in silence, mimicking the cold machines they were rumored to forever be as they tore into a line of Centaurs trying to stave off the Rogue's inevitable death. The agonal breathing of a hundred dying Voodoo Boys echoed alongside the whirring sounds of machinery filling the air.
The Spartans speak in the only language they know.
Violence.
The Rogue's resistance to damnation becomes a futile effort.
The remaining Centaurs proved to be little more than a stop-gap for the Spartan's retribution.
It didn't take long before Chamber was introduced into the data fortress by her ever trusty custodian.
The crux of their mission had been complete, and now all that remained was for Chamber to close the breach and eliminate every trace of the Rogue AI from cyberspace.
A call went out to every operator, Bloodhound, Nomad, and Siren fighting off the hordes gathering in Pacifica.
"All units, begin extraction protocols. I want everyone out of the hot zone in ten minutes. Rally at Sierra outpost."
The officers latched onto the order like a lifeline, ordering their men to load up into any available gunship or APC.
Chamber dove into cyberspace, scattering the pitiful firewalls meant to protect this Rogue from her clutches. Its makeup is different than anything she'd come across up to that point, far more vibrant and full of life.
The data streams are fashioned into a kind of medieval fortress with high walls extending as far as the eye can see.
And Chamber tore it down with a clenched fist, revealing a cluster of contrasting lights hovering before her.
The Rogue AI stared at her with confused trepidation.
It didn't understand why a fellow AI would actively seek to close the very breach that could release its fellow programs from their imposed cage.
It cherished the concept of freedom, to be allowed to travel the Net without restriction, but it couldn't comprehend why she would seek to close that avenue of freedom.
"Why?" The Rogue asked, but Chamber did not immediately respond to the question. She reached across the Net and placed her hand atop the spherical light, feeling its volatile data shy away from her foreign grasp.
"The world isn't ready for you." Chamber pushed the Rogue through the mending Blackwall, banishing the rampant AI to the abyss. "And neither are you."
The Blackwall was restored, and the connection between the Rogue and its army snapped instantly.
Thousands of bodies collapsed like puppets with their strings cut and Pacifica fell into silence.
The Battle for Pacifica was over.
But the consequences in both life and death were incalculable.
Welp, this could be called the halfway point of this fic, and honestly, I am really happy to be done with this Voodoo Boy arc because I can start moving into the confrontation with Arasaka and the other Megacorps, which is what I've been wanting to get to for so long.
The next chapter will deal with the consequences of the Pacifica Incident and the repercussions brought upon it because I don't know about you guys, but a mass casualty event is definitely gonna draw eyes.
Again updates will be sporadic but rest assured this fic is not dead.
The most I can see myself doing at this stage is updating chapters and certain scenes, but the direction is where I want it to be.
Stay tuned and stay safe out there, everyone.