It only took Uriel a few moments to scout the surrounding netspace, mostly through just summoning three sets of wings and moving as fast as possible. That told him a few things about the current ongoing fight, at least, as far as either of them were able to tell about realspace through the lens of virtuality.
Looking at the real world through virtuality was always a pain in the ass, there was a reason most people just hacked the nearest camera and looked through that instead. Virtuality was designed to be easy to interpret by human minds, because all that messy code was nice and hidden behind handcrafted (or net-crafted) icons and symbolism. However, there was no inherent translation for looking at realspace items while fully emerged in netspace.
From the netspace point of view, the only thing of realspace that existed was that with an active net connection. A totally inert object simply did not exist, and could not be seen. This had interesting effects when looking at people, or should he say, their electrical skeletons. When not immersed in the net, realspace people usually looked like their icons walking around. When their icons were not active, what did they look like?
Bundles in the shape of people, made of glowing net-connections tied together by golden strands. Most people had a neuroport these days, so that was one bundle of light. Most people had an internal agent, so that was two bundles of light. Some people had internal cyberdecks, so that was three bundles of light. The more bundles there were, the more visible the individual was to the virtual view. The more net-connections you had, the more you glowed in the dark of the net.
These bundles wore their icons like masks, or costumes he supposed. Either way, it made looking for specific people a headache, because everyone just looked like a mass of twisty light. This was made worse by the bizarre fog-like program that enveloped the local region and made everything darker.
Lucy was easy to pinpoint, she was in the east, her icon active, and engaging in some hit and run skirmishing against waves of Tiger-daemons with a Killer at her side. That and trying to avoid crossing paths with the various squads of twisted light trying to intercept her in realspace. She appeared to be holding, but all it would take is one major mistake.
Rebecca was another easy guess, she was currently in the fortifications zone currently staying still in one of the buildings as a massive collection of twisted light hovered around that region. He couldn't tell what that was, but AV was a likely guess. He couldn't hear a helicopter right now, and he couldn't think of what else it could be at that flight profile.
David and Spares were harder to find, his best guess was that they were currently the two fastest bundles of light in realspace that hadn't stopped moving yet, constantly engaging in hit and runs against what seemed like… less than a hundred but more than fifty other masses of twisted lights. He couldn't see them beyond their net-connections, but that was his best estimation.
It took Uriel a few moments to scout the local realspace and come back with tentative findings.
It took Adam a few moments to take that data and turn it into a plan of attack.
He immediately changed course straight towards the girl. He currently had no way of dealing with an AV, assuming it had even one half-decent gun on it, and he currently had no speedware. He wouldn't be able to keep up with the main skirmish.
Killing one meatbag with speedware was doable. Trying to kill a dozen meatbags with speedware would get him torn apart. So the smartest decision was to go reinforce the netrunner, allowing them to focus on supporting the rest of the battle. The brat and Spares could hold out on the frontlines so long as they kept moving and weren't stupid enough to stop. Blueberry was currently fine if ineffectual in that building, it was armored enough against everything short of proper rockets and he didn't hear any of those being fired.
The woman stumbled behind him, making him stop and glare back for a moment. Low on blood and the adrenaline was running low, but if he left her back on the ship she'd just die against the next group that attacked it, and an extra gun was actually useful here.
Grunting, he brought his sword up to clench it in metal teeth, then hefted the woman up onto his back. She yelped for a moment, before wrapping her one arm around his neck to hold on. He didn't bother listening to whatever she said next, and instead grabbing his sword again and starting to run.
Tactically, he was in a poor situation right now. He needed to get the woman and the girl to a defensible location, then get a better gun if possible, then hold out long enough for the girl to start taking down net targets. From there he could begin to move out again and slowly push the balance of power back towards his side. All he had was his bench and a sword (that gun wasn't worth taking, he glanced at it again and threw it away as Uriel scouted).
It was downright familiar, it'd been awhile since he had been in this kind of meat grinder.
He was about to cross paths with a group of three squiggly lights. They were currently moving to follow after Lucy it looked like. Standard unit size was five from Uriel's earlier glance, so this must be an injured squad.
No need to risk Uriel on a potential net-assault right now, what's the best way to deal with them…? They were moving through a reasonably tight alleyway, so standard tripping throw would be a good opener. If they had speedware, they'd either dodge to the side or up. If they dodged to the side, he'd have to go for that one first or retreat to ambush after eight seconds had passed.
Light pole up ahead, perfect. Speeding up to his maximum, he let the bench slide down in his grip and raised his other arm in a lariat.
He crashed into the light pole, letting it swing him around. The metal immediately bent with an audible groan. Then, when the moment was right, he threw his bench like a frisbee. Bullets started to fire, but they didn't adjust their aim in time.
The reinforced bench crashed into the legs of three figures in heavy armor carrying big guns. Their knees didn't stand a chance. Delightful crunches echoed out as they screamed and collapsed, the bench knocking them back considerably as they stopped firing those (12.7mm machine guns with drum mags it looked like, dangerous in his current state) guns for just a moment.
He didn't waste any time. These were an actual threat to him. He kicked off the asphate and leapt towards the first one, leveraging his weight and putting both hands on the polymer katana.
The same katana crashed through the target's armored visor and sunk into his brain matter behind. He probably died on the spot. No time to revel in it.
He grabbed the corpse's gun, and started firing as he stood up, unloading upon the second meatbag's head long enough to break through the armor there and secure a second kill. One, two, three… Three shots.
He staggered as a bullet bounced off his shoulder, shattering most of the armor in that location. He immediately jumped to the side and forwards in a kick against the final meatbag's more fragile arm joint. Said arm holding the gun currently raised and firing at him.
Another delightful crunch as the second little piggy broke. The armored meat tried to grab him with its other hand. Trying to grapple with one hand and no legs was a horrible idea, however.
He grabbed the wrist and quickly stood up, dragging the meatbag and its grabby hand up with him. To his displeasure, the meatbag was stronger than him, meaning that was an ACPA it was wearing. Wolfhound probably, getting a better look at it in the darkness. They had updated its helmet again apparently.
It didn't really matter how much stronger you were if three of your limbs were shattered, however. Adam reached over, and slowly began to rip off the meatbags helmet. Like peeling a shellfish, you gotta get through the shell to get the meat.
It took a moment, but eventually the helmet was off and revealing some meatbag he didn't recognize. He nudged the woman, who's grip had become tight as he started moving.
"Wha?" She gave off a dazed mumble, clearly still affected by the meatbag weakness of not having enough blood.
"Shoot it woman, we don't have all day." He commanded, Uriel keeping an eye on the surrounding netspace. His leg tapped impatiently.
There was a pause, before the handgun from over his shoulder pressed against the meatbag's temple and fired. The meatbag jerked once, then went limp. He dropped the corpse immediately and moved to gather up what he could before moving on.
He shoved the free helmet over his (now less) vulnerable head, snagging his bench and one of the machineguns. It would take too much time to steal one of the Wolfhounds, and they were damaged regardless. Then, nudging the woman again so she'd tighten the grip her legs had on his waist, he raced forwards again.
The girl was relatively close. He checked his status as he moved.
Armor at 88 percent. Left arm at red. That one shot nearly took his ability to move that arm. He clenched his left fist tighter around the handle of his improvised shield. Still functional.
More importantly, he had a gun worth a damn now. Modified M42 Browning, this one looked like the M42-2D model, one of the updates Militech made some thirty years ago. That meant a bullet velocity of…
His cybernetic feet didn't crack the asphate right now, this frame was much lighter. That was an annoying feature to notice, he liked cracking the ground whenever he started running.
The woman was slipping, so he jumped briefly and used his hips to push her back up on his back again, landing and continuing his run without a skip.
Uriel alerted him to two more groups up ahead, or maybe one larger than normal group. They were moving to flank Lucy currently bogged down by another group. He stomped and adjusted his course on the dime. Reaching the side of the road, he jumped across the six or so meter gap to the next rooftop and kept running.
He didn't know how many snipers they had watching the roofs, the only reason he was risking his head right now was his fancy new helmet. Quickly he moved from rooftop to rooftop, eventually approaching the building that the girl was in.
He jumped again, this time lightly, and dropped his bench as he did. He wouldn't make it to the otherside, but he would make it to that pipeline that he could grab onto and quickly slide down on.
His now free hand grabbed said pipeline.
His bench crashed down on a group about to break a door down, killing two of them on the spot.
They activated their sandevistans and did that stupid shit of moving in place to try and dodge. There was a reason that was stupid, however.
The bullet velocity of a M42-2D was around 2500 feet per second. A fullborg needed a very good sandevistan and a very good reflex tune-up to dodge something like that.
These were humans.
He fired nine bullets.
Three meatbags lost their heads.
He hit the ground and immediately moved to grab his bench, hefting it up and putting it in between himself and the entrance of the alley.
An armored squad turned the corner, bullets first. His bench vibrated with the hail of lead it was subject to. Uriel took over the camera in the alleyway.
Adam took his time, returning fire from the comfort of being fully behind cover. Two more armored meatbags lost their heads, dropping as controlled bursts of gunfire nailed their visors.
One of them threw a grenade. Adam let out and amused scoff and adjusted his position, stepping back and towards its flight path.
The grenade flew forwards. He angled his bench and shoved it forwards.
The grenade bounced back, soaring through the air. They had a brief moment of panic as it exploded into a massive pulse of electro-magnetism. EMP grenades, they came prepared to fight things without hardened shielding. Things like him. Amusing.
Two more of them dropped to the electro-magnetic pulse. Wolfhounds had shielding, so it looks like those boys skipped out on shielding their own cybernetics. Adam took his chance to rush forwards, not dropping his bench.
Another short leap took him over their concrete barricade, another bash knocked the soldier in front of him off balance.
A burst of fire from his gun tore through another visor. He chuckled as he turned it to the meatboys on the ground and raised his pilfered gun to their slightly writhing heads.
"They just don't make helmets like they used to." There was a pause, they could hear his good mood. "These are too thin, don't you think?"
A burst of six shots executed the last two. They did not think, as it turned out. He kept firing so he could get an ammo count. 25 shots as it turned out. He stole one of their spare drums and reloaded, moving on to flank the attackers on the main thrust. It looks like the girl still wasn't done with them, which was about expected.
He almost strolled to his destination, finding them shooting at a dumpster in an alley. He made sure to stay out of range of most modern radar implants, and emptied his new drum in their direction.
They didn't realize what was going on for the first pass of bullets. They couldn't move out of the way in time for the next pass of bullets. They all died by the time his drum emptied.
He moved forwards idly, dropping the newly emptied drum and snatching another as he passed the corpses. It was a bit awkward, he had to hold his bench in the crook of his arm as he reloaded. He had tried using four arms in the past though, and it just wasn't for him. Useful, but he always found them bothering his movement in the most awkward ways at times.
He walked forwards into the alley, speaking aloud as he did so. "Oi, Girl!"
He didn't get a response. Uriel entered into the local netspace again, only to almost be hit by an errant burning tiger. Oh yeah, that was happening. Uriel moved up and began to survey the situation as Adam took the opportunity to secure the front of the alley.
There were… 7 or 8 tiger daemons here, swarming around a central point around a hastily constructed set of net-defenses and barrier programs. Each time they leapt forwards to tear a layer off, they lost a limb from a flashing sword program, only for the injury to slowly revert. He frowned and looked down at his tiny hands. With his current processing power, one normal attack program wouldn't be enough.
So what about… three programs that acted together? So not a bow but a…
A golden Sword appeared in his hands, massive in his now tiny grip. They still hadn't noticed him. He concentrated more.
The hilt of the Sword morphed into Wings. There was visible light shining from it now. He concentrated more.
The gem on the Sword's hilt turned into an Eye. The Eye rapidly spun in place for a moment, before staring at him for a moment. He let go of the new program. The Eye swiveled before turning towards the net-battle.
A tiger-daemon turned towards the light shining behind it. The Flying Sword cut into its injured face. The daemon roared as its code shattered. The other tiger-daemons turned to look, taking their attention off the barriers.
The Killer flashed out with ridiculous speed, its blue eyes glowing with disdain behind its samurai helmet. Two of the tigers screamed as they too were destroyed in an instant.
Uriel crouched behind a virtual wall as the fighting continued, now much more balanced with the Flying Sword taking enough pressure off that absurdly buffed up Killer to let it do its work.
In realspace, Adam moved slowly back into the alley, gun facing towards the entrance. Eventually he reached the back with no sign of the girl. His optics narrowed. He glanced up.
She was poised like a spider, hanging from her monowire underneath an alcove and eyes glowing with net-nonsense.
"Oi, girl."
Her eyes blinked for a moment, she startled at seeing him and the woman there.
Her monowire slackened.
She fell, landing in the pile of trash bags below her in a rather undignified manner. He kept staring at the entrance, waiting for another group to show up and pointedly not paying attention to the girl throwing a miniature fit next to him.
"We're moving to a defensive location. I'll guard you while you work on net-support, got it?"
That cut off her grumbling, her face twisted into a serious frown again as she raised her gun.
"When did you get up, why is Gloria…" the girl trailed off as she looked at the woman hanging off his back like a limpet. Her features grew pale.
He cut off whatever she was about to say. "There was an aquatic team. I killed them. Follow me." He started a light jog towards the next destination. The fortifications next to the ship. From here he could clearly see the AV hovering above the region, the spotlight shining down. The gun occasionally bursting into life.
It wasn't going for him, which meant they didn't have an accurate bead on his location. They didn't have deep-dive units, or they didn't have access to direct cams. Which meant…
That fog program. It was to cut off communications? He didn't know for certain.
It didn't matter, he needed to keep moving.
Next target, that AV and it's very nice gun.