Flint walked down the steps down into the courtyard, chrome whirring with every step as he looked over what was left of the pack he'd sent out.
Fleshies scattered in front of him as he took in the beating his Wraiths had taken.
"This," he said, artificial voicebox turning the words into a booming snarl. "Was supposed to be a milk run. You had twice their numbers. You had surprise. You hadpreem fucking guns.HOW DID YOU FUCK THAT UP?"
One of the Raffen Shiv opened his mouth. Flint pointed a chrome hand at him. "NOT DONE TALKING!"
He paced, every single fucking sight he saw - the scorch marks, the shrapnel holes, the wounded boys and the missing vehicles including the truck with that very rare high-velocity railgun -making his chrome burn, heart and lungs ticking up in speed for a fight he wasn't about to have. "I thought I could leave you boys to handle it. That you had thebasic fucking senseto not screw this up. But I guess I gotta hold your hands for everything, huh?"
None of the fleshies would meet his eyes. Fucking cowards. He whirled on one of the pack leaders, a stringy man named Shank, and the scopsucker almost fell flat on his ass. "You," he said flatly. "Explain what the fuck happened. Now."
"W-we hit them like you said! We had them pinned, they were meat for the grinder…and then…"
"And then?"
"Then they dropped hell on us. They weren't supposed to have that kind of firepower! We lost like twenty guys and the gun-hauler, and they totalled a bunch of our rides! Fuckers were just drawing us in!"
Flint sighed. "Idiots. How many did you kill?"
"We got at least four of the jockeys, shot the shit out of a fifth. I think we nailed about half of their buddies, but if they've got firepower like that, no way in hell are we going back for another run. I'd rather-"
"Rather what, meat?" Flint rumbled.
The Raffen shut his meat-mouth. Good. They could learn.
"Listen up!" he shouted, drawing the attention of the entire camp. "The relics think they're gonna come here and fuck us up. A bunch of outdated fleshbags hiding in tin suits. We areWraiths." He raised his arms, pandering to the crowd. "How many could they bring? Five or six of their tin suits, some wannabe gangbangers in cheap flak armor? Do you think that's gonna bring us down?"
His answer came as the Raffen Shivs howled.
Grinning, Flint lowered his arms.
"So here's what we're gonna do. We're dragging out the big guns. Pull that APS we ripped outta that crashed corpo flyer outta its crate and set it up - they can't be carrying enough ammo to pull that trick again, but we ain't gonna get caught off guard. Meanwhile, I want every gun we have ready, anything heavy set up to blow them to hell the second they poke their tin-clad noses onto our turf. We've got twenty times their numbers. They can't exactly knock on our front door. So be smart. Don't go out alone. We clear?"
A chorus of affirmations rang out, and Flint nodded, before turning to Shank. "And you…" he paused. "Go wake up the shriekers."
Shank went pale. But he ran off.
Flint let him go.
He didn't like waking up his old comrades. But needs must.
He'd come a long way since he'd left Maelstrom behind.
He wasn't going to lose it to a pack of scavenging relics too afraid to implant chrome for a fight.
—-
Ana swam through the thin cyberspace of the local Net, trailing in the wake of the convoy. Three armored trucks, none of which matched - the Round Table's transporters were as varied as the Junkerknights they carried. Inside, seven Junkers, and four nudies.
That was really what they were going to attack a camp filled with who knew how many Raffen Shiv with.
Eh. Not without a plan, at least. Tumble wasn't that stupid.
Damned pain in the ass that the local Net was nearly non-existent, though. Ordinarily, plugged into Zduhac's deep-dive unit, letting the suit do its thing while she did hers, she could bounce from signal to signal, machine to machine, and do her work without even being noticed. Here, away from the bulk of the Night City Net-architecture, she was limited in bandwidth and what she could connect to. The powerful comms array on her partner didn't matter if what was receiving her signal couldn't handle the data load or if the signal was getting degraded in transmission. It was taking a lot of what she had just to keep the ping-tracking stable, her program infesting every connection the Wraiths had. Which, because practically everything was tracking something and had a computer in it, down to the guns, meant just about everything they had on them.
But that ate bandwidth, and there wasn't exactly a lot of it out here. It'd make things awkward if she had to fight right now - she was left with what Nethacks didn't take up too much bandwidth on a network not really designed to support high-level information transfer.
But all that really meant was she needed to see the enemy coming - and as she flitted from signal to signal, taking in data, she listened to the comms traffic of the ad-hoc lance she'd found herself part of, familiarizing herself with each of them.
They'd walked out of that Wraith attack with half their number - and Dez's suit had taken enough of a beating that they'd chosen to leave him with the wounded and a couple of the less combat-capable mercs - but the eleven of them were still tough customers. Well, seven - three of the nudies were just the truck drivers, and the fourth a slightly-cyberpsychotic techie with one of those Maelstrom-style multi-optic implants who was tagging along to strip the Wraiths of everything of value.
It wasn't a lot. But it'd be enough.
"Wraith camps usually don't have much in the way of heavyweight defenses. They don't build, only take over what's been left behind, and places that arereallydefendable usually belong to a corp," Tumble was explaining. "But they knew we were here and brought AT weapons to deal with us - well out of the usual Raffen Shiv band's range of firepower. So we don't charge in stupid, alright? Track them back to their hidey-hole, then we decide whether to punch through or to strangle them."
"Yeah, yeah,"Cranson drawled. "I've brought enough for at least another salvo, we can hammer them and walk through the wrecks."
Idiot. They-
"They're gonna know you're coming," Jacob said, taking up what she'd intended to harangue the heavyweight pilot about with ease. "Hell, are we sure they're not going to try to ambush us? I would."
"Same," echoed 'Alecto' - she didn't feel like digging up the pilot's name at the moment.
"Zduhac?" Tumble asked, clear and cold on comms in a way she'd never heard the woman before today.
She checked again. "Ping-tracker's just went sedentary on the vehicles, and mobile in a small radius on the guns and chrome," she reported. "Looks like they've stopped and dismounted, doesn't look like ambush layout. Pulling up geo-loc…tossing coord's to you, Roadie."
"Received, Zduhac. So no, no ambushes. Still - keep an eye out. They might have a second crew waiting."
"Copy and clear, Roadie," Alecto's pilot said.
"We have a plan?" 'Chevalier' intoned. "Or are we just going to make it up as we go along?"
"Depends on what kind of mess we're dealing with. Geo-loc matches an old rest stop location - a few big garages, CHOOH pumps, the usual - but it's likely forted up." Maps flickered out, briefly visible in the Net as they updated everyone's HUDs."Low ground, though - we can pull up at this ridge, here, scout and get a better idea of what we're dealing with. Currently…"
Tumble paused. "Prometheus, Churchill, what's the range on your heaviest weapons?"
"Need a target for anything bee-vee-are,"Cranson answered. "But can hammer them about a kilo out good enough to pick out a nudie from his pals. Anything longer and the 'smart' in 'smart missile' doesn't exactly work, heh."
"Roughly the same," 'Churchill's' pilot answered. "Direct fire only from mine."
"Good. Unless there's an army in there - and it's too small for that - I want you to hit them from a distance. Prioritize anything that looks like heavy weapons, we want them too busy trying to take cover to shoot back with something that can hurt. Alecto, Chevalier, Zduhac, you're assault - get in close and tear them down. Lancer, you're with me - we'll cover their backs and pick off the rest. We can work out the details once we do some recon."
A chorus of assents came from the Junkers, Ana joining in to keep up appearances. Zduhac would follow its protocols and had enough of a spark to follow along, not much more than that - her job would be covering the others with her 'runner abilities. Nobody ever expected ACPA to have that kind of functionality, it was always kinda funny to watch.
She frowned as a new series of notifications popped up from the sensor suites she was hooked into.
"Heads up," she called. "Picking up thermals and Net signals - by the way, Tolliver, what the hell do you have hooked into your ride, some fighter-jet suite?"
"Wouldn't you like to know, Zduhac?" the driver of her truck cackled back.
"Right. Looks like a Nomad convoy on a parallel road. Bigger than the one we drove off, but not by much. They'll be close enough to see us soon."
"Noted, Zduhac," Tumble said. "Everyone, pull up and dismount - cover behind the trucks, we're not taking chances."
—-
Saul Bright swung a leg over the saddle of his ride and dismounted, waving the rest of the Aldecaldos back.
The sight on the parallel road below was one he was familiar with, if usually from the other end of things - a short convoy of upgraded vehicles, their occupants dismounted and under cover, ready to shoot back the second the approaching swarm of nomad riders proved hostile.
Of course, usually the dismounts were people, not ten-or-twelve feet tall armored warsuits with vehicle-grade firepower, but it was still a pretty familiar sight. Whoever was leading this bunch was pretty competent at life on the road. More than he'd expected.
He'd heard stories about ACPA, and the Aldecaldos had tangled with Junkerknights and corporate pilots across the states - especially all the way out on the East Coast, where they were a hell of a lot more common. Any of the suits could splatter him across the landscape with the pull of a trigger, and with nothing but gun barrels pointing out from between the gaps between vehicles, he didn't have a lot to go on.
So he kept his hands in full view as he approached, until he was close enough to make himself heard without shouting himself hoarse.
"Which one of you's in charge?" he asked. "I'm here to talk, not fight."
There was a moment of nothing but silence, then one of the suits stepped out of cover and into view. Battered and scuffed, it nonetheless towered over him - a snub-nosed railgun protruded from one shoulder, and the squat dome of a laser APS from the other, while ballistic shields mounted on waldo arms covered its flanks. It carried a multi-barreled gun loosely in one hand, business end pointing at the ground, and was practically covered in garish insignias and tribalist markings.
"And you are?" the suit's pilot growled.
"Saul Bright. I lead the Aldecaldos." He gestured back at his people. "We were going to go make things difficult for a gang of Wraiths that's started getting too big for their britches in our turf, and we thought you were a transport convoy straying a little too close to where the crossfire promises to be." He made a show of looking over the Junkerknight convoy. "Guess not. You're Round Table?"
"Damn straight."
"Thought you were a bit more loose-knit than this." It was true. From what he'd heard, getting Junkerknights all together was like herding cats - even harder than him trying to keep the Aldecaldos on task. "I'm guessing that the Wraiths did something stupid?"
"They tried to kill us. We're going to remind them why that's a bad idea."
Well. Panam was going to be insufferable, having her guess be proven right. He'd thought that this local branch had made enough of a fuss for a corpo contract to go out and motivate a bunch of them to get together to split the danger and the spoils.
But it was still an opportunity. "So, you have a name under all that armor?" he asked.
"Roadie," the pilot said. "I speak for the rest for the moment. What do you want?"
He didn't miss the coldness in the pilot's words. It wasn't like corpo disdain - it was something a lot more personal than that. But that didn't matter.
"I was thinking," he began carefully, "that we might be able to get things done a lot more cleanly if we work together. You've got heavier firepower, we've got more people and better intel on the place where they're holed up and what kind of opposition you're charging into. So we work together, and kill these bastards faster. How does that sound?"
Roadie leaned forwards slightly. "Your people keep their word," they said flatly. "That's good enough for me and mine. You have a place to bivouac in?"
"There's an abandoned township just up the road. We were going to set up there anyway - it'd make a good base camp for ambushing the Wraiths."
"Understood." The suit slammed a fist against the side of the armored truck, rocking it slightly. "Round Table! Mount up and join our new friends! We're sharing the kill count today!"
Saul nodded, and turned away, walking back to his people. He picked up the radio, still tuned to their pack's frequency. "They're coming with us," he announced. "We're going to shake out a new plan at the town. Make room for them in the convoy and don't start anything, alright?"
Without waiting for a response, he mounted his bike and started driving down the dirt road. A few moments later, the rest of the Aldecaldo pack followed him - this time, with three transports full of Junkerknights in tow.
"Town's clear, Saul, nothing here but spiders and sand," Scorpion called over the radio. "How much firepower are we looking at from this bunch?"
"I count eight suits from the footsteps, but I only got a good look at their boss. If they're the standard, these guys could clean house with a Militech company," he said over the roar of engines. "Try and keep Panam off them, alright? The leader doesn't seem to much like Aldecaldos."
"Us, or nomads in general?"
"They've got old neo-tribal livery all over their suit, and I recognize a few of them - old clans, long dead. So don't let anything stupid happen."
"No promises. Mitch might start a fight with 'em too, you know how he is about tanks versus tin cans."
Saul snorted. "Like you aren't too."
"Hey, I at least know better to mouth off to a lance and a half of 'em while they're suited up. ETA?"
"Ten minutes."
Ten minutes later, he was pulling into a storm-torn warehouse, letting the familiar bustle of his people pass him by as they started setting up. The only eddy in the wind was the loading dock, where all seven of the suits - one had four legs, he'd counted it twice it seemed - were walking out, metal feet clanging on the concrete floor. He supposed the Junkerknights wanted to make a statement. Straggling behind them were four men - three in heavy flak armor and carrying SMGs and pistols, the fourth a borged-up strommer with a shotgun slung across his back and no armor save a leather vest.
He kept half an eye on the little group as a makeshift command center began to take shape, a couple of the Aldecaldos rolling in generators to power an old tac-map setup, others setting up LCD screens and relays to the comms truck outside.
Meanwhile, the Junkerknights grounded their weapons, and their suits unfolded, revealing a rag-tag collection of pilots - and Roadie's, just like he'd thought, had the look of a hardened nomad - battered into middle-age, but still wearing the familiar style of clothes on a body carved and hardened by the desert and the beating sun.
"Ready to do some work?" he asked, offering a hand to the woman. She shook it firmly, but didn't smile.
"Always," she replied. "I'm Tumble. Figure if we're working, might as well use real names for the moment."
He nodded. "Right. Let me make the introductions, then." He waved at the rough group of veterans who'd started gathering. "Terry and Webber will be on comms for this, keeping things organized. Cassidy, Scorpion, and Hammer are our best scouts."
"We'll be heading out in a sec," Scorpion interjected, the hooded man grinning. "Just wanted to see who we'd be working with."
Tumble nodded, arms folded. "Anyone else in particular you want us to meet?"
Saul shrugged as the scouts made their exit. "We can do a tour later if you're interested. For the moment, your own people are the bigger question mark."
Tumble smiled thinly. "Fair enough." She pointed at the smallest of the pilots, a nearly-skeletal kid who didn't look more than fifteen in a netrunner's skintight outfit, and then gestured at a hulking, gorilla-like suit with an autocannon on its left shoulder, a massive machine gun in its arms, and two more belt-fed guns dangling from its forearms. "Ana Slavica, tac-name Zduhac. Netrunner and heavy support, cruiserweight suit."
A blonde in a battered denim jacket, twenty at most - his suit, lighter than Slavica's but still ten feet of metal and gun, was hefting a laser cannon and a shoulder-mounted railgun, the nozzle of a flamethrower protruding from its left arm. "Jacob Cooper, tac-name Lancer. Generalist, like me, mediumweight."
A dark-haired man in mechanic's overhauls, and a heavyset Asian in an ill-fitting armorjack - a spear-and-shield carrying suit with a grenade launcher and laser cannon on its shoulders, and a squat, broad model which carried an enormous two-handed blade. "Troy Williams, tac-name Alecto, and Kishioki Shiro, tac-name Chevalier. Melee specialists, both mediumweights."
A snaggletoothed, wild-looking man with burn scars visible up and down his exposed arms. His suit was the four-legged, four-armed monstrosity, the largest of them all and carrying enough ordnance to level a city block. "Flynn Cranson. Tac-name Prometheus. Heavy artillery. Professional pain in my ass, heavyweight suit."
Last of all was a tall man in neo-militarist casual wear, whose suit, the smallest of the bunch - scarcely more than eight feet tall, practically overgrown regular armor - nonetheless toted the largest railgun Saul had seen off of a vehicle, and had vanes and control surfaces sprouting from its back, probably enough to give it controlled flight unless he missed his guess. "Donny Johnson, tac-name Churchill. Long-range sniper. Lightweight suit."
Tumble waved down the others who'd come with. "Tolliver, Graham, and Morrow are the drivers for this, they'll be dropping us off and staying out of the bulk of the fighting. Johann on the other hand just wants to strip them of everything of value."
The near-borg waved a hand, the cheerful expression on his face clashing horribly with the spider-like multi-optic embedded in his face.
"Now then," Tumble continued. "You mentioned intel?"
"Terry?'
"On it," the techie confirmed. The LCD screens and tac-map flickered to life - the latter displayed a pseudo-3D map of their target. "The Wraiths we're after have set up in a pre-Unification War rest stop - lots of garage space, and once they stole a few tanker trucks able to refuel their rides. Beyond reinforcing the fences and posting armed guards, their fortifications are pretty light - it's the fact there's about a hundred and fifty of them in one place that's keeping them together."
"More than usual," Tumble observed. "Wraiths usually are too prone to infighting."
Saul nodded. "Like I said. They started making trouble recently - and we've got a pretty good idea as to why." He pointed at the right-hand LCD screen, which began displaying a rotating image of a massive man who was something like ninety percent chrome by volume - and had the same optic implants as Johann.
"Flint Greaves, former 'strommer and near-borg," he said. "Not sure if he was kicked out of Maelstrom or just left - either way, he and a half-dozen of his buddies rolled up, took over the local Wraith chapter, and started making trouble. They've hit corpo convoys and even snapped up a few of our people. They need to be cut down to size and scattered, fast. Most of them are typical Raffen Shiv - no chrome, shit guns, shittier rides - but allegedly Greaves is forcing chrome on a lot of them. The last thing we need is a second Maelstrom infesting the desert."
Tumble cocked her head. "It's not just personal, though, is it?"
Saul smiled thinly. "It might be that Militech, Biotechnica, and Arasaka are all paying us to kill these sons of bitches before they start being a major problem for trade in and out of Night City."
Cranson whistled. "Three paychecks for one job? Goddamn, you boys are sitting pretty."
"Near enough," Saul confirmed. "I'll cut your people in on a slice of the pay, since your help would make this easier. Call it fifteen percent."
"Thirty," Tumble countered. "This is personal, but we're not idiots."
"Twenty-five."
"Deal. Toss us the eds when the job's done."
He nodded. It was still good business - and the family needed that more than ever these days. "Now, then. We were planning to set up shop and bleed them dry - if they're stuck in their wasteland fort, they're not bothering people. We've got half their numbers, but our people are better equipped. Hit their convoys, fade back into the desert, keep them awake at nights, slit some throats in their sleep." He smiled. "Payback for my brothers and sisters."
"And now?" Slavica asked.
"Now, we've got you. So we're busting down their door. Scorpion and the others should be setting up the feed soon. Once that's done, we see what they've got parked and waiting for us, and we decide who's going in where."