Once upon a time, my co-pilot for our Militech Basilisk hover-tank, during the Unification Wars, told me:
"Legends do not burn Nomad Clans villages".
Adam Smasher gladly corrected him, ripping his head out of his shoulders, and almost mauling me to death with said head, before he shot me in the chest with a brutal gun implanted in his forearm, and left me to die in the middle of the wreckage of my armored column.
Join the army, they said, job opportunities, education, privileges, and cool chrome, they said.
Well, the chrome part was partly true, the assholes on top of the army did chrome up nice and tidy, with enough processors and drugs that it was a freaking miracle that the entire column has not gone cyberpsycho in the first week. Perhaps the dual connection of the Basilisk hover tanks that we drive up and down the wastelands helped in that front.
Of course, Asshole Smasher was part of the Arasaka "Security advisors" that were the nightmare of all the NUSA forces, and of course, I was the unfortunate lad that had found him in the middle of bumfuck North California and was torn apart for it.
But that was of little importance for the High command, they chromed me a little more, pumped me a lot more of combat enhancers, and set me again on the cabin of a Basilisk, ready to be deployed once again, as supplies did not deliver themselves to the frontlines.
Why did I not go full cyberpsycho on these assholes?.
Because I wanted to live, and desertion was a death sentence. NUSA will hunt and kill you, and Arasaka will dig your brain with a fucking scoop, and then they will kill you. The rumors about what happened to the comrades that ended up in Arasaka were not for the faint of heart. Someone even whispered about a thing called Soul-killer, an ICE program on steroids that rip the mind out of the body and turned it into digitalized data that Arasaka can play with at their heart's content.
Of course, those were nothing but rumors and what's not, but who wants to be the one to test if they are real or not?. Aye, what I suspected. That's why I continued being the good soldier and praying to all the gods out there that the last upgrade of my OS, or my chrome, did not become the straw that broke the camel back and finally made me cross the line of Cyberpsychosis.
Cyberpsychos was a thing since the surge of the cybernetic enhancers. The body and the mind can take up to a limit how much metal is substituted with flesh, and the brain finally snaps and cranks up the crazy to the eleven. I fought a cyberpsycho once, one of the lads of the squads that I carried all over the place with the AV-9 Aerodynes; when I was not on the Basilisk cockpit; who finally snapped after how they were assigned to a search and destroy mission.
I can hardly blame the lad, their mission specs were shit, the detes of the mission were sketchy as fuck, and they have to be inserted behind Injun country, just in time to be fucked by a convoy of Arasaka Nighthunters, in route to evacuate an asset of the company. Truth is, they were killing civilians. A colony of Arasaka corporation workers was testing the land for a possible energy plant.
The poor sucker went Hexed, the cyber psychosis hit full throttle, and tore apart his C.O, and three more squad members before the rest of us dogpiled him and put him out of his misery. The problem is, that a cybered up soldier carries a lot of firepowers, and muscle power, after all, they were cranking up our legality to the eleven, and once all inhibitions delta the hell out of the brain, then you have a very, very dangerous individual on the loose.
Maybe with one of those pretty and shiny power armors, or a Metalhead, one of the lads or lasses that has gone full borg and has a complete cybernetic conversion, had the highest chance to put down a Hexed cyborg, but we had none of those at hands, and we were fucked. Four died, and six of us were crippled before he put the poor gonk down six feet under.
That was strike one for my brain, putting down a squad-mate, just because the C.O has been a complete idiot, ignored the neon signals of the lad on the edge of being Hexed, and instead, give him even more Black lace, dropped the morale of the squad to the floor. And when we were starting to pick the pieces together, then, and just then, the new Basilisk came rolling down the cargo transports, and I found myself forced to pilot one by myself.
By any definition of sanity, and logic, efficient, and coherent military standards, I was a dead man walking. The sensory overload of the Basilisk should have fried my brain ten times over, especially when mine, "Blackwall", was a custom model that instead of cargo capabilities, was caulked up to the nines to be a killing machine.
40mm Auto-cannons, self-guided rocket launchers, even a railgun for those moments when a true heavy peeks around the battlefield and some had to blast to kingdom come before it flatlined all of us, in a shower of true firepower, that my poor, and very much forgotten, panzerboys battalion has a chance to survive.
I did not. Well, better said, according to the official records, Basilisk GR5507, callsign Blackwall, was destroyed by an Arasaka VTOL during one of the finals battles of the Unification Wars, with the pilot going KIA.
It suited me just fine, fuck them, they have done nothing but fuck my life ten times over, a Clan of Nomads pick me up from the wreckage when they came to seek out some loot from the wreckage that was the majority of my armored platoon. Blackwall and I were the spearheads of an armored strike over a supply depot of Arasaka.
The Bakkers were a Nomad clan moving their way up from South California, taking the sights near that nightmare that is Night City, and seeking out biz to do near the corporate-owned sprawling urbane landscape.
They took me in, they healed me, fixed my chrome as best as they could, and offered me a place on the clan. Being a basilisk pilot with an OS capable of handling the street of a combat vehicle, and cybered up to my chromatic balls, I was quite the asset for the clan.
But I had to decline, I was on the verge of being Hexed, I felt my mind slipping away bit by bit, ironically, in a sample of very dark humor, the taxing task of piloting a battle tank like my Blackwall all alone, has forced my brain to adapt. With a mixture of combat drugs, cybernetic cognitive enhancers, very not-legal modifications and coding of my OS, and disastrous biological rhythm, I have managed to survive up to that point, but I knew that I was going to be Hexed sooner than later.
The Bakkers had taken care of me, and I felt Giri with them. So, I did all I could to balance the accounts, and once I felt that I have paid enough; and feeling myself slipping down the rabbit hole of the cyber psychosis; I paid them for the shittiest vehicle that they had, drive down the road to Night City, and prepare to go down swinging.
Without any recommendations, and after smuggling myself inside of the "City of Dreams", I knew that I was pretty much burned. No contacts, no resources, no hole to hide, but that suited me just fine. Walking down the streets, and looking like a Nomad that has lost its way into the city, I just strolled down the entrance of the city from where I have crossed in.
The place was called Vista del Rey, and I smiled like a starved wolf when a bunch of posergangers; with the colors of the Valentinos, I learned later; tried to mug me. I tore them to pieces, weak, feeble, pieces of meat that are barely enhanced, and after tossing their corpses into the garbage cans, there is no need to be a pig, I pick the loot and used it to start a small hole to dig in.
I planned to pick up the worst gang in the city and run a one-man war against them, until some gonk is luck and zeroed me, or I finally go full Hexed and tore them a new one, taking as many assholes with me as I could. I did not want to die, I have fought tooth and nails to survive, but with the chrome in my body raving war against my brain, I was a corpse walking, I was going down on a blaze of glory, and took down a bitch on the downswing.
There were two candidates, the Maelstrom and the Scavs. I took a eurodollar and toss it, letting lady luck decide for me. The coin spoke, and the Scavs were my target.
The Scavengers was a gang whose primary biz was to kidnap people and carve them apart to collect their organs and cyberware and sold it to the black market, and any organization that wanted to buy cyberware of dubious origin. According to the Net, the NCPD gave the Scavs the title of the worst gang of Night City this season, with the Maelstrom a close second, but under the Scavs in the body count.
So, I walked to the nearest vending machine, kicked it, and a pistol fall down the tray. That is possible the thing that I love the more about this demented city, the vending machines had irons to sell. A Budget Arms corp vending machine will sell you a Slaught-O-Matic pistol for 90 eddies. The pistol is a cheap, plastic, no reload, pink abomination, but it does its job well, and, such cheap iron, is better than no iron at all.
Carving a path through the scavs, all of them of obvious Russian mannerisms, something that annoyed me, that I have Russian ancestry running through the few of my natural veins that I had left. Despite that, I fought against the Soviets during the Unification Wars, after all, my family was of Russian ancestry, immigrants during the 4 fourth corporate wars, I believed, my memory is a bit of a mess.
At some point, I lost count of the corpses, I did not care anymore, just walked into a scav hole; getting that information from the computers on their little butcheries; zero everything in my way, sometimes in quite the imaginative ways, like how I choked a scav with the amputee leg of a lass with Valentino tattoos. Rinse and repeat.
My internal clock told me that I have been like that for three days, and that's when I realized that I did not care anymore, that I have finally go to the deep end.
Cyberpsychosis, I welcome you, madness is quite the comforting sensation, nothing matters anymore, nothing is important, just go with the flow.
Two hundred corpses later, thirteen scavenger gang butcheries tore apart later, a dozen NCPD agents beaten to an inch of their lives, and three MAX-TAC agents torn apart later, I awoke, with the mother of all the hangovers, in a cell in the special prison that the NCPD has for Cyberpsychos like me.
Not that I care much about it, my head hurt, my OS was making me taste green and smell the complete discography of Samurai, my chrome was playing scrabble with my squeeze meat part parts, I had a meter long erection, and the odd desire of having an orgy with the CPU of my tank, Lizzy Wizzy, and the entire Mox gang, on a pool of Black Lace. And that was just the first thing that came to my mind, once I was cognitive again.
That was the year 2070, and my forceful induction into NCPD, more concretely the numbers of MAX-TAC.
It was hilariously easy to forge a file for me, I was nobody, I was a corpse walking, my DNA was on the databases of the NUSA army, however, I was declared KIA, meaning that I was officially dead, meaning that I was free meat for the NCPD and the MAX-TAC to experiment however the fuck they want. After an entire year of therapy, I walked out of the rehabilitation center for cyberpsychos that the NCPD had under a shit ton of red tape, donned the black gear of the MAX-TAC, and started my illustrious career as a police officer.
On the positive side, preem chrome baby!.
I had the cybers that the NUSA put on me, but on the MAX-TAC, they fixed the disastrous code of most of my banged-up systems, caulked me up to the nines, and cybered me up, ready to face other monsters like me, with a serious chance of coming on top. Weapons, armor, cybernetics, bio mods, anything that could keep us at the top of the totem pole. Technically speaking, we are the apex predator of Night City, and thanks to the rampant boga of cybernetics; a fashion that has never go down since 2020; there will always be work for reformed psychos like us.
On the negative side, I felt like an attack dog.
MAX-TAC passed most of their time on constant vigilance that we do not fall again into the cyber psychosis, we couldn't even take a dump in peace without our biomods sending an alert to the precinct about a spike in adrenaline. Not to mention that they give us a lot of blockers to keep the worst of our psycho tendencies suppressed. Well, that is a bit unfair, as they are very cautious about what drugs do they give us, our diet is quite controlled and they do take care of us, but is akin to take care of a pack of attack dogs. Back when I was a young gonk on the streets of Nevada, instead of joining a gang, I became an expert at hound-tipping; the practice of ambushing and reprogramming police robohounds; and what I was experiencing on MAX-TAC, was eerily similar to that.
Add to that, the fact that agents of MAX-TAC do not have downtime as the common people know it. We are on service 24/7. Between the constant vigilance of our caretakers, the scarce free time that we had; either to peruse the Net for any entertainment that we can, train on the gym, adjust our chrome, or whatever; and the 24/7 therapy against our psycho problem, and I felt incredibly frustrated.
Since I was a youngster, I was practically an urban nomad. I live in Nevada, on the sprawling urban wasteland of the cities, I was accustom to a freedom of sorts, fuck, even when I enlisted to the NUSA, and I was drafted into the Panzerboys, I move around a lot. Even inside of my Blackwall, I traveled all the West Coast, up and down.
In MAX-TAC, I was caged, and I did not like it at all.
Quoting another famous line, I should have been cautious about what I wish.
It's vox populi that one does not quite MAX-TAC. Once one is drafted into the Cyborg squad, there is no retirement, from MAX-TAC to the Graveyard, and quite possible that your chrome will go to the next agent in line, if they need an upgrade, or to be recycled into a better gear.
But the truth is a bit different.
True enough, MAX-TAC is the last job that most of us will have, but it's false that the only way to step down is to be flatlined. Some agents burn, be from the chrome, the constant pressure, a cyber attack, crippling wounds that no cyber could fix, etc. Those agents are granted a retirement bonus, and a spot at the Megabuilding H9, where the NCPD had a discreet and comfortable spot for retired individuals.
In my case, when I zeroed the wrong cyberpsycho, I was offered an alternative to the usual retirement plan.
The thing was, that I was the MAX-TAC agent that emptied his shotgun into the face of a psycho that was terrifying Corpoplaza, and an hour later, the entire precinct shit their collective pants, when it came to light, that I have zeroed an Arasaka High corpo. The man has been infected with a virus BD, and he was screeching to high heavens as he was assaulted by "demons", meaning that he was shooting everyone around him, foaming by the mouth.
NCPD decided that the best they could do was to offer my head on a silver platter to Arasaka, but I delta the hell out of the precinct, before they could even do shit, and dig my way into the deepest corners of Night City.
I hide in the No-Tell Motel for an entire month, buying a new room every single day, from ten different fake accounts that I have set up in the Net under twelve different fake skeletons before the Netrunners of the NCPD could burn them down. Cashing all the eddies that I have in paper, and burning down all net traces of my existence, by the second time in less than a decade, that must be some kind of record, I seek out a pretty good ripperdoc called Nina Kraviz, a fellow Russian who is well known and a globally-acclaimed ripperdoc.
The lass did a superb job, happy to found a fellow Komrade that spoke Russian perfectly and was not an asshole like most of the other Soviet gangers and scavs posergangers around. Paying upfront in eddies, I altered my facial features and bought an entirely new skeleton and biometric data for the Night City databases to pick up whenever they scan me.
That cost wads of eddies, but it was completely worth it.
With a new identity, I collected what's left of my scarce eddies and move to Heywood.
Among all the gangers of the city, I moved to the place where resided the more sedated of all of them. The Valentinos are more a posergang than a gang as most of the population knows, sure enough, they are dangerous, but they had the honor, they follow a code, and are nothing like the Scabs, the Animals, or the Maelstrom. The worst of the Valentinos is that they compete to see who is the greatest seducer of all of them, the more difficult the seduction, the better, something that baffled me greatly, considering that one of the leaders of the gang, Padre, aka Sebastian Ibarra, was a man of the cloth.
NCPD may have burned any bridges with thermonuclear fire, but the databases of the NCPD are something that I knew upside down, and due to how bored I was during most of my downtime, I became a competent netrunner, when I was not onboard an AV-9 to put down a poor gonk in the middle of a cyber psychosis attack. That's one of the reasons, I had such a backup plan when my life went straight to hell in a handbasket. I had a permanent, very discrete, uplink with the NCPD database, so I had access to a lot of data about the gangs, and the different gonks in them.
The Valentinos are hardly saints, not by any stretch of the imagination, but at least they are way more tolerable than the Voodo Boys, the Animals, the Maelstrom, or the Scavs. The other gang, if it can be called that, is the Mox, and for the most part, I respected their determination to survive in this concrete jungle.
That was the year 2076, six fucking years since I step foot in the so-called, City of Dreams, and so far, more than dreams, this place was made of nightmares, but considering that I was a monster as well, it suited me just fine.
With a new identity under my belt, I let my feet roam the streets of the Glen, to the best know restaurant of the sector. El Coyote Cojo. Mama Welles was the owner of the restaurant, and it must be said, that even the most hardcore of the Valentinos tipped his hat when Mama walked down the streets, which spoke volumes of the respect that the old woman has garnered in the hard livelihood. But the thing that mattered the most for me, was the fame that the place has because of the quality of the food that was served there.
Boy, Mama Welles did not disappoint, the food was preem.
Still not entirely sure how the heck happened, I was involved in a fist with a bunch of drunken Animals that entered the place, dispatching them with efficient brutality, before the son of Mama Welles Jackie, ended up battered and bruised, and that was the foundation of a friendship with cheerful edgerunner, and the gratitude of the old woman.
If Mama Welles put a good word for you, then the Valentinos are on your corner. Or at last, that was the impression that I got from all the analysis that the NCPD had on the Valentinos and their association with the Coyote Cojo. Make it double, when Jackie, one of the most well-liked lads around, put another good word for me.
In the beginning, I was not all that interested in chippin' in with the Valentinos.
I was a Solo, an edgerunner without a crew, much like Jackie, but the man had a gonk ton of contract with Heywood and beyond. After I explained to Jackie that I had to go indie for the next three months at least, he offered me a temporary job at his garage. My explanations about going indie made him raise an eyebrow, but Jackie was an edgerunner as well and understood that after a loud job, hiding in a hole was a must.
With my experience on the Panzerboys, I was a competent enough mechanics to earn my keep on the garage, and thanks to my skills, chrome, and no-nonsense attitude, most of the mechanics and choombas of the area appreciated my presence at the garage, when the latest poserganger came to the place, believing that he was the next Johnny Silverhand.
Time passed, and my standing with the Welles, and by extension, the people of Heywood grew. They considered me the discrete wall that worked at Jackie's, a tranquil, polite, and calm choomba that can rip an Animal in two without breaking a sweat. The rumors about my persona were also quite extravagant, from the rumor of how I was a Militech supersoldier, to the rumor that said that I was the most humane borg that they have ever seen. The latter rumor died pretty quickly when some of the joy-toys working for the Valentinos sang my praises.
According to them, I was the best client they had ever had. Hung like horse, polite, paid upfront, and respectful. It also helped that I give a hand to the lasses under the Valentinos' payroll whenever they have a problem. Be it prevent a lass when a client got out of hand, a poserganger or a wannabee believed they were entitled to something, or simply a pickup and driving gig.
It was utterly fascinating how the goodwill of the joy-toys extended to the rest of the community. But I was happy for the first time in way too long. I had a job; with the occasional gig to kept myself not all that rusty, but not high enough gig to make the NCPD came knocking; I had a place to call my own, though, it was hardly a big place, more like a wardrobe in a Megabuilding, and even if I barely made enough to keep my chrome at the peak, I was content.
To be honest, the best was how the Welles had taken a liking to me, when I was out of home due to an unfortunate shoot-out with the Maelstrom, they even allowed me to crash in with them. Jackie and Mama insisted.
Boy, when Mama made draniki, I would have cried like a child, if it wasn't for my cybernetics.
Kiroshi, the best of the best for the MAX-TAC, one of the few advantages of my former profession.
Mama Welles laughed when I wolfed down all of my homeland dishes, even growling to Jackie when he tried to take one.
To pay for my stay, I allowed Jackie to convince me to take more serious gigs. Not that the lad did not have convincing arguments. I also acted as a handyman for Mama, whenever I was in the house, the garage, or the Coyote. After the gonk ton of repairs that I had to made to my vehicles at the Panzerboys, and the gonk living conditions that we had to suffer at the barracks, I knew my way around a screwdriver.
In the street, I was considered a merc, maybe a Solo, though, with my reputation on the street being so low, most of the real high fixers considered me "fodder", chrome head meat shield. Among my curriculum, what stood the most was my chrome augmentation, serious, really serious combat gear, and my piloting skills. Out of boredom, I also dabbled in netrunning, I was competent, but any real pro will run circles around me without breaking a sweat.
Jackie took me to one of the top fixers in Heywood, none other than Padre, and he convinced the man to give us a chance to prove us as something more than the common choombas around.
I was not all that happy to chippin' in with the Valentinos, but Jackie dispelled such idea when he reassured me that he was not a Valentino any longer and that we are there because Padre is the top fixer of Heywood, nothing more. But if I wanted some good ink on my chrome, the Valentinos had the best tattoo artists around. The ink was a pretty common thing, but with the augmentations that I sported, any tattoo had to be set on my synth flesh, or my face.
Jackie and I were now a crew of two, taking biz all over Heywood and beyond. Curiously enough, Jackie and I were big boys. Jackie was over the six feet tall, and broad, a suave Latino choomba who was universally liked on the Heywood streets; I was taller than Jackie and built like a tank, I was as big as one of those sumo-like Arasaka bodyguards that you can see around Arasaka's High corpos, but more fit.
Whenever we walked down the street, people were forced out of our way due to sheer body mass. I tried to convince Jackie to suit up a bit, but the choomba did not like the corpo digs at all and let it to me, who can rock a suit better than most of the corpos around. I tended to walk around suited up, covered head to toe in a black suit, that could fit as well into a corpo building as in a Mob. Jackie had the contacts, but I was the one that did most of the talking.
One of the things that I loved the most was how I always had good intel at hand due to my ghost connection with the NCPD. Of course, they can not even compare with the databases of Arasaka o Militech, or even with the number of people that moved around in the Afterlife, but for the street was quite the advantage. I knew who has done what beforehand, and how likely it will be that the gig could turn into a bust.
So, we did biz around Heywood, even helping the Valentinos with the 6th Street gang when they got frisky, or any of the other gangs that were testing the waters. To be honest, I did not dislike the 6th Street, they were guardians that had lost their way, perhaps if the actual leader was flatlined they will return to their roots, but that was food for the thought for another day.
After the first month with Jackie, it was clear that we were good, that we were a step above the rest of the fodder, but not even remotely close to the high leagues on the Afterlife. Jackie was determined to be a City Legend, to be someone like Morgan Blackhand, Shaitan, Boa-Boa Weyland, Johnny Silverhand, etc. I grimaced at the thought, after all, a legend smashed my face in and tore apart my co-pilot when I was a panzerboy, guiding me into the path of cyber psychosis.
I came clean with the Welles that same day.
I confessed everything, who I was, whom did I fight, what happened with the Bakkers, my draft into the MAX-TAC, and how I was about to the flatlined by the MAX-TAC and delivered to Arasaka in a silver plate after I zeroed a high corpo who was out of his mind due to a defective BD. Heck, even told them my real name, the one that I had taken from my grandfather, back in Belorussian.
My name now was Jardani Jovonovich, or so it said my skeleton for whoever dug around my data on the Net. A Belorussian ancestry street kid with way too much chrome on his ass.
Speaking about that, most of the eddies that I won went to my chrome and the few hobbies that I had developed. In the streets, I would be called a Porky, out of the word porcupine, and that is the slang for weapons collector. I was also looking for my own, armored and cammo upgraded, AV, but that was a feeble dream more than anything else. I hated to travel by metro, as I always ended up crushing some idiot poser with way too much drug in their veins, or an idiot that tried to mug me.
Consequences of dressing well, I suppose, every street fodder believed that I was an easy target, but after Jackie and I started to collect enough reputation around Heywood, I only had to care about non-locals trying to do that. Even so, there were too many idiots walking down the streets, and mug attempts were a daily occurrence to me. Of course, when the idiots tried to mug me, they often ended up in crippled messes or the nearest dump.
Seriously?. I sported chrome, some serious chrome that any two-bit idiot with a functioning brain could see is combat grade, and they still decided that mug me is a good idea. Gonk heads the lot of them.
Back to the conversation with the Welles, they were quite taken aback by my tale. It was something pretty unbelievable, but Jackie was the one that smiled widely, although he had his reservations, after all, I was a certified MAX-TAC monster that has got out of cyber psychosis, but Jackie did not work like that, I have passed months around Heywood, and I have never, ever, show even the slightest clue of going psycho. Fuck, I was a model citizen for what the choombas around me cared. Mama was the one that put it best, no monster would have cried as I did at a home meal from his homeland.
It felt good getting that out of my chest, and the Welles kept the word to themselves. Something that I appreciated a lot. Though Jackie joked with me at every turn that he could, never let me live it down. Still, my presence never went to Jackie's head. Somebody else would be taking higher risks, confident in having an ace under their sleeves with me, but Jackie did not do that. We kept doing the same gigs, but now Jackie valued my combat input a lot more, and let me take the face spot whenever we talked with unknowns out of Heywood.
In the final season of 2076, I can say with certainty that Jackie was my brother in all but blood, of course, it did not help that Mama has taken a liking to call me one of his niños, but if that was the price for eating her meals, I will gladly pay it. Accuse me of being predictable if you want, but I go for good quality grub to the Coyote Cojo daily. Since I ate Mama's cuisine, the mere idea of chunking, like they taught us at the NUSA, became anathema for me.
On a secondary note, my presence at the bar acted as a secondary bouncer of sorts. The bar was under Valentino protection, but when gonks like boosters, Animals, or fuck, any idiot with an iron believing they were the next Blackhand, having someone like me on the corner, a Solo that can make the best cybered up ganger tiptoe around him, it's always a guarantee of safety.
Perhaps that's what made Padre offer my services to Regina Jones when she needed a Merc to deal with the latest case of Cyberpsychosis. Padre was not all that eager to deal with the ravaging madness that the Cyberpsychosis is, on the other hand, I was a well known, cybered up to the nines, choomba of a trusted solo in Heywood, and who can beat the gonk out of three Animals without breaking a sweat, and apologize for the damages caused to the place.
Regina Jones, the top fixer of Watson, a former reporter of FTF radio before it was absorbed by N54 news. She did not like the new bosses and went solo, becoming quite the exceptional fixer in Watson. Curiously enough, if you wanted to make a good rep with the woman, you must be open to adopting non-lethal tactics during your gigs. More concretely, the gigs that deal with cyber psychosis.
The lass wanted to capture as many cyberpsychos alive as was possible, either to give them to the MAX-TAC to try to be rehabilitated or to try to help them get out of the rabbit hole that is the cyber psychosis. Of course, whenever the word Cyberpsycho appeared on the streets, everyone and their mother evacuated the premises, or hollered up in the nearby bunker, waiting for the MAX-TAC to arrive and dealt with it.
Padre did not want to send any of his fodders to such a death sentence, but then he remembered the almost seven feet tall wall of chrome muscle that was one of the niños of Mama Welles, and out of divine inspiration, offered my services to Regina, saying that I would be perfect for the job.
Rule number one, trust but verify.
Regina did that and found my skeleton good enough, and my street cred adequate. Then, chalking me up to the fodder category that all fixers put their solos in, and gave me a call, testing the waters. I think I made a positive impression on the woman, at the beginning she thought that she was dealing with a corpo-rat, due to my suit, and educate manners, but I talked biz, and I was open to the idea of non-lethal force since the beginning of the gig.
My first job was to take down a lad on the Badlands that has carved a bloody path all over Vista del Rey and then had made a run for the farms of Biotechnica, hollering down one of them, and turn the place into a haunted house. MAX-TAC can not act outside of NC, so the job fell right into my lap.
Regina contracted a Nomad driver, from the Aldecaldo clan that has set up shop outside of NC. She will pick me up, drive me to the farm, wait for me to deal with the psycho, and then pick me and the psycho back to NC, so I can deliver it to Regina for whatever she could try to rehabilitate the poor sod.
Dressed in my usual suit and tactical helmet, along carrying a coat, and a coffin unit for the psycho, I took a cab; Delmain, always; and seek out, at the borders of the city, the driver was an Aldecaldo solo that seems to have a fallout with her clan recently, and has taken distance from the main camp.
That was unusual, Nomad clan is quite the tight bunch, but in 2077, hardly a novelty, life was harsh, be it in NC or the badlands around the urban nightmare. The lady was waiting for me on an underpass, waiting at the side of her Nomad vehicle.
When I saw her, the first impression that I had was "Dat ass", as she was bending over inside of the motor of her, very, very modified Thorthon Mackinaw.
Speaking of the car, that was a custom piece if I ever saw one. With a heavy turret, reinforced tires, and frame, my Kiroshi detected advanced electronics passively defending the vehicle, which was a car made for roaming the dessert alright.
And the pilot was also a freaking beauty, dusky skin from the dessert, toned and fit, Nomad war clothes, and enough booty to have the entire pirate fleet of the wast coast sailing to plunder that treasure. Perhaps because she was all-natural, as I can only saw glimpses of her neuroconector, but that only made her even more attractive, a treasure, in this day and age of chrome and plastic beauty.
"Miss Palmer?".I asked, and she flinched, hitting her head with the car's bonnet, and cursing loudly, before twirling around; fast lass, I will get her that; and aim at my chest, with a Lexington pistol.
"Who the fuck are you?!". She hissed and massaged her head.
"Your client". I calmly responded, folding the visor of my tactical helmet, so she can saw my face. "Regina hired you to bring me to the Biotech farms", I tense the harness of the coffin unit that I carried, "to collect a bounty".
Panam blinked a pair of times, taking all my almost seven feet tall frame in; I was as broad as an Arasaka bodyguard, but without looking like a sumo reject, neither as if I have been partaking heavily on the Animal's "juice" to build muscle.
"Are you a corpo borg?", she asked with her eyebrow raised, doubting between shot first and made a run, or slow the gun and walk away slowly from the walking tank in front of him.
I laughed softly at that. Not really a surprise, it was hardly the first time someone has asked that question, due to my mask and suit preference.
"Niet lass", my Belorussian heritage showed from time to time, using Soviet slang words and Russian words. It happened when I installed the language OS upgrade for my Kiroshi and neural knowsoft. "I am cybered up, so much is true, but I am as corpo as you".
"Ha", slowly lowered her gun to the desert beauty in front of me.
Her suspicions are something that I have grown accustomed to. I had three rules that I have set up for myself, to prevent any possible relapse in cyber psychosis, along with a healthy dose of BD with a psychoshrink and some extra chem blockers, just in case.
Be polite, be efficient, and always have a plan B.
"Aldecado's, I take", I stood in front of her, with a relaxed posture and a soft smile on my face. "Nice bunch, I run with another Nomad Clan, back in the day, the Bakkers, did you hear of them".
"Only by reputation, they joining the Snake nation", Panam put her iron back to her very juicy tights. "And I run solo now".
"Uh", that took me by surprise. I never painted the Bakkers as quitters, and joining the Snake Nation was the equivalent of losing their identity, something worse than death for the Nomad Clans. "Okay then, sorry for assuming anything, on other order of business, your vehicle is quite the impressive ride, shall we go?".
Flirting with her bad, but flattering her wheels?. That put on a positive light on her eyes.
"Yeah, sure, get into my old good warhorse". She smiled and waved me to ride shotgun on the truck. That was a curious name, but fitting.
Leaving the coffin unity on the back of the truck, I ride shotgun, a bit uncomfortable considering how the car is not made for a brick-like gonk like me, and we spoke life for a bit, as she drove to the farms of Biotechnica. Small talk, just to ease the gig, she seems like a good lass, and having a driver like her in my contact list seemed like a good idea. Not to mention that she is quite the beauty, and I was curious about her.
The Badlands, I traversed this place up and down way too many times when I was a Panzerboy, my Blackwall left gravity tracks all over North California. A wasteland that is pretty similar to what I was seeing through my cyber eyes. The broken remains of settlements, rubble, the wraiths gangers ruins in the distance, substitute it with the war remains, and it was like a flashback from my time in the NUSA army.
Panam Palmer, that was her name, she insisted in that I called her Panam, instead of the polite Miss Palmer that I have been using. I happily obliged. She drove us securely through the roads of the Badlands, and we spoke about the upgrades that she had done to her warhorse. After working on Jackie's garage, I could talk biz about her ride, and she appreciated it.
The farms of Biotechnica were one of the main sources of food in the city, the gen-wheat grow fast and nutritive enough to make the basis of almost all of the synth-food all over NC. It was one of the reasons why none of the other Corps did mess much with Biotechnica, the Bios are the ones that feed all of them. Also, their biomods are quite impressive.
Bioware was one of the most expensive products but had the advantage of being way lesser affected by cyber psychosis. The Animals would be the perfect example of the worst of the Bioware problems, meanwhile, the cyberpsychos would be the perfect example of the problems of the cyberware.
Speaking of cyborgs, I left Panam at the edge of the farms, along with the coffin unit, and walked down the rows and rows of genetically modified wheat. I had to plug in, into the cameras of the field, and I have located the cyberpsycho. The man was trashing a farm vehicle, chanting about fuck corps, fuck corps, and several other inane mechanical incomprehensible drivel of his altered vocal cords.
Poor gonk.
Panam and I were on a shared comm, just in case she had to hightail the hell out of here with my battered corpse, she wanted to see the spectacle, still. Cyberpsychos are not all that common on the Nomad Clans unless they are quite the wealthy clan, they do not swim in all that much eddies, and their gains tended to be more focused on their wheels than on their bodies.
The wild desert queen that is my driver for this job was a prime example of a Nomad. I have scanned her, and she only had a neuroconnector, the rest of her magnificent body was all-natural. On the other hand, her warhorse was customized to the eleven. Between armor, weapons, and driving systems, the warhorse was quite the steed.
It did not take me all that much to locate my target, since I started walking into the wheat field, the guy had kept his vendetta against the farm vehicle, but when I walked in the range of his cybernetics, he instantaneously jumped at me with the mantis blades of his arms ready to tear me apart.
But I was faster.
Dodging out of the way, I sent a demon to the pyscho. I was pretty sure that it will not work well, as the chrome of the psycho will be already on high alert, and his ICE will counter my demon, but the point was to sent a cascade error through all the OS of the psycho, with any luck that will shutdown him, but I did not trust much on that happening.
The psycho lacked anything resembling technique. Sure enough, the knownsoft that the lad had in his system was pretty good; Militech, most likely; but it was so full of holes that it was not even funny. The blades swung with incredible strength, and the combatware of the lad was more than enough to tore any common enemy apart.
Among the melee cyberweapons that one can find on the streets, the Mantis Blades are a solid staple that all cyborgs had used or will use at some point. I used the blades in the past, but I soon changed the blades for gorilla arms. Due to my combat style, a mixture of old school boxing, Thai boxing, wrestling, and pure brawl, the blades were not suited to it, alas, some booster to my punches?. Oh heck yes.
Keeping my distance from the blades, always a step ahead of the psycho, I took out the pistol that I had prepared for this work. To be honest, this gig is not going to be profitable for me it is going to cost me extra, but the point of the gig was not the eddies, was to set up myself as a reliable Solo for Regina, making her spoke with me the next time she may need a serious merc, for some serious biz.
The RT-46 Burya was a monster of a revolver, that only had one thing going for them, brutal power. The electromagnetic gun was capable of piercing walls, solid, brutal, like a brick with a trigger, it fitted me to a T.
Left, right, stab, stab, the combat patterns of the psycho were based on an old system for Militech, I have seen those combat chips before. The knowsoft of this poor sod has not been upgraded in quite some time, but that worked to my benefit. Patiently running circles around the lad, I shot three times at him. Two failed, faster bugger than he was and his movements had an unpredictability quality due to how he was out of his mind, but the third shot hit him right on the knee.
The armor of the joint prevented the leg to go flying, but that made him stumble and break his attack pattern, digging the tips of the blades on the earth. For anyone else, the action would be impossible fast, but for a fellow chromed ass like me, I had all the time of the world to blast my last bullet onto the chest of the guy.
The bullet was not a lethal one, I had a pax mod installed on my RT-46, I needed the guy alive and not with a hole the size of a human head on his torso.
But when the kinetic and electric charge of the bullet, along with the final upload of my demon got to his OS, the psycho started to suffer spasms. His ICE was unable to counter the error cascade and my bullet has disrupted the electric currents of his chrome and sent him into the equivalent of an epileptic seizure.
Quickly shortening the distance between us, my gorilla arms fingers dug into the reinforced skull of the psycho, raise him above my head, and slammed his head against the metallic floor of the artificial farm of Biotech. An Instant K.O, I have pulled that move on several more occasions, against individuals like the Animals, who were physically impressive, but whose brains are still pretty squeezable.
Taking the chord of the cyberdeck on my arm, I plugged into the data slot at the base of his cranium, his OS was already in disarray, so it was pretty easy to send an army of blips and demons to shut down his implants and put him into a coma.
Carrying the guy back to the warhorse, I found Panam staring at me wide-eyed, still not believing what I have done.
"What the fuck?", she eloquently spoke. "You toyed with him like it was nothing".
"Hardly", I huffed, opening the coffin unit; a little smuggled trinket from Trauma Team, and setting up the psycho inside. "His hardware was worst than mine, street-level chrome, and his combat soft was predictable, Militech grunt level of predictable".
"And how is that not toying with him?". Panam crossed her arms over her bountiful chest, he rocked that green bodysuit and leather jacket Nomad-style clothes.
"Did I prolong the fight just to have a high?", I asked back. "Did I ever give the impression that I was nothing but controlling the flow of the fight?. Did I taunt, provoke, or belittle in any way this gonk?".
Panam blinked at that.
"Well, no", she admitted. "But I can say for sure, most of the time you two were blurs, ripping apart a piece of the farm, then jumped all over the place, only when you shot him in the chest, and choke-slammed the psycho to the floor did I saw it, at normal speed".
"You don't have any augmented reflexes?", I said with a slight tone of surprise in my voice to make it authentic. I have already scanned her, but feigning ignorance will allow me to know the lass better.
"No, I don't like cybers all that much", she shook her head. "It will not be the same, I mean, it will not be me".
"I understand", I nodded in respect and approval, something that she picked up.
"Well, I thought that with all the chrome that you have on yourself, your reaction will be a bit different", she smiled softly and helped me finalize the plugging of the psycho on the coffin and back to the trunk.
"Ah, those cretins of the metalgangers and the Maelstrom", I huffed in open disdain. "They are little more than little gonks that believe that chrome is better, gonks, all of them. People like you Panam, capable of surviving the Badlands with nothing more than guts and will, are a hundred times better than any of the cybered up bloodhounds of any gang".
That took Panam by surprise, and I swear that I saw a fraction of pink on her cheeks, but it could be the effort of lifting the heavy coffin unit back to the truck. She cursed a bit about the weight of the thing, but she was a strong little desert queen.
"Then how come that you are also, cybered up?", Panam asked me back, with a tone of curiosity on her pretty voice.
"NUSA Army frontlines", I flatly replied and she blinked, cursing a bit under her breath and understanding my explanation perfectly.
On the drive back to NC, we made some more small talk, and she dropped me and my new cargo, at the same spot where she had picked me up. Seeing how I was able to carry the coffin unit as it was nothing but a clumsy backpack, she shook her head and chuckled at how I was something out of a Bushido X movie. We shared contact detes, it's always good to have an extensive list of contacts, and we have clicked well, and Panam waved me goodbye before going back to the Badland, and her camp.
Meanwhile, I called Regina and asked when should I drop the psycho, a bit roughed up, but alive and in one piece.
My street cred grew quite a bit after that, Regina always gave me a call first whenever a cyberpsycho gig fell into her lap, and others Solos and fixers, started to realize that I was a choomba that could go toe to toe with a cyberpsycho and capture him alive, something, that up until now, was only at the reach of MAX-TAC or cybered up elites of the corpos, and the apex predators of the edge runners crews.
Of course, once Jackie got an ear of my success, the lad threw a party in my honor, and also to present me a new member of our merry crew, a Nomad lass called Victoria "V", that has cut ties with the Bakkers; of course; as they joined the Snake Nation, and wanted to make a living in NC.
They meet each other during a smuggling gig that went south. Without the backing of a Clan, the patrol borders decided to sell them to corpo security for an extra bribe, something far more common than one would think, and they had to run all over the Biotechnica flats before they lost them.
All for a freaking Iguana, and I am being literal here, a living, breathing Iguana.
Those animals went extinct quite some time ago, but I can see some corpo at Biotechnica growing a clone of something along those lines. The Biotechnica corp did try to recover a lot of the lost flora and fauna of the NUSA after the wars and the Datakrash, with relative success. Anyhow the Iguana was quite valuable, and with that eddies in the pocket, V started a new life in the city of dreams.
Much to my eternal surprise, V recognized me.
When I went to Kraviz for a tune-up, removal of all the NCPD trackers, small facial surgery, and a new skeleton on the Net, I hoped that the skeleton of my past will remain in my past. Imagine my surprise when V, a kid that was twenty or so when I rolled with the Bakkers, recognize me despite my facial modifications. The gorgeous redhead was hell on wheels when I meet her, and like a fine wine, age has only made her even more exquisite.
A six feet tall amazonian redhead, toned by the harsh and demanding life of the Badlands, with enough womanly curves to make professional joy-toys to look like clumsy donkeys, and with charisma and appeal oozing off her frame like an intoxicating perfume.
V was like a fire, what she knew what she wanted and nothing stopped her from getting it, with her particular skills as a pilot; better than mine at the wheels, I can admit that; and her radiant charisma, she was the perfect fit to Jackie's suave charm and my intimidating politeness.
Three Night City pariahs determined to become Legends of NC.
Jackie, V, and Jardani, with no handle still attached to their names yet. That was something that will come with bigger street cred, bigger risk, higher rewards, and our names reaching the ears of the true apex predators of Night City.
God help us all.