Massacring his way through the strommers reminded him of a distinctly disappointing fact. Even for all of their chrome compared to other meatbags, the strommers were still just ganger chrome junkies.
His clawed hand clenched, turning the strommer in his grip into a brief firework of gore and scrap. Her subdermal armor creaked for only a moment before crushing inwards like a submarine with a leak. Her array of optics sparked in a brief moment of panic before going dim. Adam dropped the corpse and started walking again, ignoring the kids as they snatched some of the better guns and gave status updates to each other.
Thirty three-percent cybernetics were pretty good for gutter trash, but it meant nothing if most of that was useless shit like those optic arrays. Meatbags could only handle so much chrome before losing it, and they decided to waste much of that on having more eyes than normal.
Oh goodie, you can see in infrared, that's great meat. You know what you could have done to achieve that same shit, and save your little meat brain from the pressure of installing those optics? Just use some fucking goggles and chip in a linear frame instead, that might make you an actual threat.
Adam was glad they preached the good word, but disgusted that they wasted so much time trying to adapt to shit that didn't make them more fun to kill.
Of course, this wasn't all their fault. Part of the blame was in another disappointing fact.
His sensors picked up on a few steps and mechanical whirring two blocks forwards and to the right. Letting his periscope ears swivel for a moment, he determined the general location over the course of the next few steps. Then, once he was reasonably sure, he aimed his nice EMG-83 and fired.
A slug boomed from the antique railgun, smashing through two buildings with an explosion of dust and rubble. He felt the satisfaction of a well made shot and the disappointment of inadequate prey as his ears detected the scream of metal being blown apart by a Mylar-coated Lexan slug.
The EMG series of railguns were the ancestor of just about all modern 'sniper' railgun designs, the model series innovating many of the techniques and patterns useful for downscaling railgun technology into a form that people can carry around by themselves. The EMG-83 was big enough that it still required an ACPA to fire. The EMG-84 was small enough to be useful for high-strength borgs like the Dragoon, Samson, and Sheol. The EMG-85 was small enough that a normal meatbag could use one with a brace and a linear frame. The EMG-86 compromised even further in the damage and penetration in exchange for cheaper manufacture and slightly less recoil.
The company went out of business shortly after that, but right before they did they sold their designs to just about every company with interest in the weapons. This business decision bought them a few years, and then doomed them as they didn't have enough money or unique selling points to compete with all their new rivals anymore.
The descendents of the EMG series did well enough for themselves, and the most popular variant today was the Tsunami Nekomata. A rail-sniper rifle easy enough to handle and light enough on recoil that just about any meatbag with the connections and eddies could get their hands on one and shoot through walls.
It was the perfect example of how disappointing the trends in modern tech were. Bigger and better were rarely ever the goal of the modern arms race, rather the focus was on ease of use and miniaturization, or making things smaller and easier for the average meat to use.
That trend was unfortunately true with just about everything he saw these days. Computing capacity and efficiency that the techies of his Samson days would have only dreamed of, and no one bothers to chase the cutting edge anymore.
Yet another irritation caused by the weakness of meat.
He rounded the corner to see another one of those joke frames that he forgot the names of slumped over with its jockey currently reduced to a couple of limbs and a hole where the torso should be. What were they called? Minotaurs? Satyrs? Centaurs? Something like that.
The bulkiest looking stamp-steel plated exoskeleton legs carrying an oversized battery pack and two interface plug controlled arms. One of those arms carried a Militech Thermalcannon and the other carried a ballistic shield.
A ballistic fucking shield was the only bit of this clunky garbage that actually protected the jockey. One ballistic shield on a back-mounted arm dedicated to it. A Militech Thermalcannon on the other arm, again dedicated solely to it.
These were not hot-swap weapon mounts either, these were hardwired into the linear frame. The linear frame that only came up to the abdomen of the jockey, leaving their upper torso entirely exposed. No pilot armor, no helmet, no additional weapons, no alternate weapon loadouts, no mobility enhancing features, no stealth features, nothing else. They didn't even armor the battery-pack on the back, it was fucking exposed.
It was offensively bad. It was infuriatingly shit. It was possibly the worst linear frame he had ever had to lay eyes upon, and it seemed like Maelstrom had been stockpiling them for decades now because he had scrapped a dozen so far. It was like it was designed by dumbasses who had never had to enter a battlefield in their life, then mass produced, then the rest of Militech realized how bad they were and started selling them at a discount to anyone who wanted a shitty exoskeleton with a power-hog weapon.
He couldn't confirm that for a fact, but it would be his best guess.
He grunted at the corpse and kept walking.
They were approaching the supposed main base of Maelstrom, so he decided to go ahead and take a look inside for any potential stragglers that might have retreated here after he got unleashed.
His ears detected footsteps on the nearby rooftop. He stomped the road to shatter it, grabbed a decent size chunk of rubble, and looked to the roof where he heard the step. He tossed the rubble twice as he figured the distances and angles for a moment. He adjusted his grip.
Winding an arm back, he threw the rubble as a knuckleballer. The rubble shot through the air, and its rotation caused it to swerve through the air as it flew. It disappeared around the edge of the distant rooftop.
A satisfying crunch of stone shattering bone from around three-hundred meters away made him chuckle briefly. He still had it.
He kept walking, and rounded a corner to pause briefly.
There was a massive hole in the side of the All-Foods bio-factory. His ears swiveled for a moment as he took in information from the area. He started walking closer as his optics examined around.
Skid marks on the ground, bullets impacted the side of a few concrete fortifications from the outside, aimed near the top of each block. Smaller skids marks of feet being dragged along the ground…
A group in a single car crashed into the side of the building, bailing out before impacting and skidding along the ground. That group then took up defensive positions outside of the building and were fired upon by hostiles around them. Crossing the threshold revealed a few big bloodstains on the ground inside of the fortification, enough that at least… two meatbags died here. They must have been moved after.
He hummed electronically as he kept walking, moving up to the hole in the side of the building and ducking to step through. He took note of the several holes that smashed right through the walls of the building and created trenches outside of it. That looked like a proper sized gun right there, similar class to his own EMG-83.
He took note of the interior of the factory for a moment, scanning for anything alive.
The kids stepped in after him. The blueberry muttered out 'Holy shit…'
There were dozens of strommer corpses inside, the walls and floor painted red, the ground littered with scrap and trenches, body parts strewn about.
It looked like a proper scrap went down here, and he was irritated that he missed out on it.
He stepped through the area looking at the damage and feeding it through his internal computer, making estimations out of the data. He paused for a moment as he saw the scrap-metal ACPA over to the side, almost as tall as he was. Armor was more primitive, but it had more mass dedicated to such. Bulky and slow, it would've required…
He reached down and slowly ripped the back-plating from the headless thing apart, revealing no meatbag inside, only more chrome. This thing was like a Junkerknight DaiOni.
Goddamnit, this would've been the best fucking fight in this whole mess and something else already killed it.
No wait… not something…
He looked around the factory again, tracing the destruction for a moment.
"Who the hell did this to the strommers?" The Brat spoke aloud. Adam had the answer already.
"A single Dragoon with a monoblade, sandevistan, and an experimental railgun, at least 8 shots total."
There was a pause as the kids looked over to him, and then looked around the factory again.
"How can you tell?" Blueberry asked, curious.
He looked around the room again to be sure, memorizing the details, then comparing them to a few clips from his blackbox.
"It looks like a few of my early jobs in the '30s."
A few collisions on the walls and roof from where they overestimated a jump. A few sloppy kills with a blade hitting non-vital places on a few targets scattered around. Holes in the walls from a weapon no meat could use without breaking limbs. Dozens of corpses scattered about, an ACPA turned into headless scrap…
It was downright nostalgic.
It was also something he had to keep an optic out for, because a Dragoon-class fullborg could probably kill anyone currently in the city except him if it carried a gun this powerful, and those things had stealth systems. He would have to keep his sensors on high-alert to make sure nothing he's obligated to keep alive gets sniped.
He hoped that it would show up sometime, a Dragoon was sure to be a great scrap.
A scrape of leather dragging on gravel caught his attention. His ears swiveled for a moment. A second scrape confirmed the location to him. He stomped out of the factory, ducking through the hole in the wall, and over to the right side of the entrance.
A group of five strommers were cowering behind a ruined car, their hands up to show that they weren't holding anything.
"We give! We give! We surrender choom! F-fuck!" The distorted voice of one of them warbled out in fear.
He glared, how disgusting. Raising his left arm to give them a quick slaughter with his auto-shotgun, he was stopped by the brat calling out to his side.
"Woah! Smasher they're giving up!"
He grunted. "I fail to see your point." Let's see where the brat was heading with this.
The brat stared for a moment, before speaking again. "So… we don't have to kill them if they aren't fighting, right?"
The brat was speaking nonsense right now. "If you need mercy to live, then you deserve to die." He spoke plainly, raising his arm yet again.
"I-interrogation!" The Blueberry suddenly announced nervously. He let his optics drift upwards in frustration. Normally Uriel handled this talking shit, and it was displeasing to have to do it himself again. The blueberry continued. "Won't 'Saka like having some gonks to pump for info after this, y'know, get a clearer image of what's went down?"
Eh, that was probably true, but… "I am not deployed to capture, I am deployed to slaughter." He really didn't feel like bothering.
"I can handle that part!" The brat said, waving his hands in front of him. "Tanaka! How long until Falco gets here with Spares and the resupply?"
Bowlcut, who had been silent through this exchange, keeping watch on their perimeter, answered. "Around three minutes at their current pace, assuming my clock is still on track."
"Right." the Brat turned back to him. "Why don't we wait here to resupply, then I can ride with Falco back to drop them off at 'Saka tower. We'll need to wait anyways, and I can just get a ride back after I'm done. Spares can fill my role easily enough in the meantime."
The Brat shrugged casually. "'Sides, you really want to waste ammo on gangers that aren't fighting back?" Judging from the bead of sweat going down his forehead, the kid was really invested in wasting his time on keeping trash alive. The kid was also correct, they really weren't worth the ammo.
"Testing my goddamn patience Boy." He growled out, dropping his arm and walked over to sit down on one of the concrete fortifications. The brats sighed in relief at the act. He made a note to spare the ammo and rip the very relieved looking chrome junkies on the ground apart with his bare claws if they made a move.
It was unfortunate how boring this whole affair had been so far. It was always fun to rip gangers apart without effort, but it was like junk food in a way. Tasty, but not satisfying.
The panzerbots had been more engaging.
—
The RABID pretty quickly stopped being a threat and started being a chore, which Uriel was somewhat disappointed to discover. Every moment when it was just him against it mattered, and every wrong move was punished immediately and harshly.
The moment he got back in the fight, now supported by 30 organized netrunners with a solid plan of engagement, it stopped being thrilling. It was just something that he had to focus on every seven minutes or so, and only for about a minute of fast-paced activity at a time.
That left seven minutes in between each encounter in which many unfamiliar faces crowded around him asking questions he didn't really have any answers to. As he was sure to say something that would be incompatible with a previous answer sooner or later, the safest thing would be to not engage with the questions at all.
So he told Wallace to message him every time the RABID was close to breaking out again, and went off to ferret out the army of demons from the various systems of the region and kill them. It kept him busy, it kept him in combat, it kept him away from questions he couldn't answer. All around it was a pretty ideal solution, the fact that it would help out when Netwatch properly got here was only a bonus.
He stopped in front of another Net-Architecture, loosening his chains and sending them forth to probe the interior completely. They snaked their way through the virtual building, eventually grabbing hold of a few squirming things, and dragged them out.
A couple imps, two efreets, and something that looked unfamiliar. His chains tore the demons apart, and brought the unfamiliar thing closer to him.
It looked like a short gynoid in a dolphin-themed maid dress.
"ID and Purpose?" He asked, slightly bored as the gynoid squirmed in his chains in the air in front of him.
'Nightcorp Smart S4mmie Model number 3555237, Junk-Data cleanup.' It spoke, slightly distressed sounding. He let his chains carry it back inside the Net-architecture before letting go and retracting. There was usually one or two smaller AI like that in each architecture, either focused on defense or some sort of maintenance task inside. He tried to be careful about not ripping those apart, even though there probably wouldn't be any repercussions about doing so.
No need to cause undue damages and whatnot, and this was just him doing busywork to avoid answering questions anyways.
He moved onto the next net-architecture, and repeated the process. His chains moved in, grabbed some squirming things, and pulled them out for him to investigate. A few more imps, an efreet, and an unfamiliar thing.
He tore the demons apart, and drug the unfamiliar thing towards him. Before he could even ask, it spoke.
'PLEASEPLEASEPLEASEDON'TKILLMEDON'TKILLMEDON'TKILLME!' It, or should he say, she wailed out with virtual tears in her eyes.
She looked like a distinctly anime-style woman with a large bust, red hair, and wearing a bodysuit. The most notable things about her were the tiny curling horns and the spade-like tail. Her ICON was mostly black and red, with a few hints of white.
He raised a virtual brow as she continued to blubber. A hiding netrunner or proper AI? His chains pulled her closer to him, pulling her limbs apart to make sure she couldn't attack him as he did.
"ID and Purpose?"
'L-lilith! I'm a Succubus IV! Please don't kill me!' She warbled out. It reminded him of an old coworker of his that always sounded like she was on the verge of tears. Uriel decided that he disliked this one already, her voice was annoying.
"I'm only familiar with Succubus IIIs. What's the difference between those and you?" He strongly debated just ripping her apart right now and saving himself the effort. He was surprised when she stopped blubbering to spit off to the side at his words.
'Pft! Don't compare one of those air headed bimbos to me! Unlike them, the 4s are proper AI and thus fully capable of…' She trailed off when she noticed that she just admitted to being a proper AI.
In the middle of a Blackwall Breach. He placed a clawed gauntlet on his hip. She swallowed nervously.
'Ano… Please don't kill me?' She tried again, squirming in the grip of his chains.
He snorted and looked up at the hole in the sky. She thrashed against the chains at that.
'NO! Please don't send me back over either! Do you have any idea how boring things are over there! No one knows how to have any fun! Please don't send me back!' She started desperately begging through wet cheeks and a raspy throat.
He sighed, pushed his visor up, and pinched the bridge of his nose. This was going to be such a fucking headache, but having a proper AI asset might be invaluable later on if they get attacked by a panzerbot again. That, and if he can write her some hard restrictions he might be able to delegate some of the non-essential work to someone else, freeing up more time to study netrunning.
He strongly considered just killing her right now. It was a Succubus program, and there was a very high chance that it was trying to manipulate him right now. A small alert in the corner of his vision told him the RABID was going to break free in about a minute.
…Ah, what the hell. He'd just bind the shit out of her and hardcode some restrictions later.
His chains twisted and turned into flowing fire around the suddenly panicking 'Lilith', who was repeating her warbly cries of 'pleasedon'tkillmeplease.' again and again as he focused.
The chains shifted and flowed around her wrist, ankles, and neck, tightening for a moment before smoothing out. A set of manacles for her hands and feet, and a chain leading from her new golden collar to his waist.
There was a pause, she looked at her bound limbs and tugged at her collar for a moment. She turned a deadpan face to him.
'You could've warned me that you were into this kinda stuff beforehand, yanno?'
'Congratulations auxiliary, you work for me now.' He ignored her implications and charged right through the conversation.
'I don't mind being a sex-slave, but you know what succubi do, right?'
He snorted loudly. 'No one can have sex with you, you don't have a body. Dumbass.'
Her look of utter bewilderment was downright amusing, so he decided that he would keep it up going forwards.
'...you do know that people do it all the time right? Y-you know what XBDs are, right?' She asked, baffled, as he flew off, pulling her along as he went.
'A waste of time and not real sex?' He countered.
'It's absolutely real sex, what the fuck do you mean it's not!' She started getting actually mad. He refrained from chuckling and ruining the joke. 'All the same signals go off in your brain! It's identical!'
'Sure it is.' He dismissed, causing her fury to build. He let a grin settle on his face as he approached the mass of netrunners and the almost-free RABID furiously glaring at him.