Julius Borg wasn't exactly the best and brightest in Night City, he'd admit that to anyone - but he was damn good at his job.
When you didn't use painkillers and you still got repeat customers who weren't completely bugnuts crazy, it meant a lot.
Well, at least some of his customers weren't bugnuts crazy. The woman currently on his table, he wasn't so sure about.
Even the toughest of people without pain editors tended to react when they got cut open. She took it like nothing, even as he hooked her new cyberdeck directly into her nervous system.
But then again, it wasn't all that surprising when you got down to it. He had leads plugged into pretty much all her chrome - which was more extensive than it looked even if most of it was medical - as he worked, keeping an eye on her vitals.
The only reason Ana Slavica wasn't already dead from multiple organ failure was the high-end cocktail of drugs in her system and a bioware suite that was barely holding her together against the absolute clusterfuck that was her body.
What was getting cut open compared to that kinda pain?
"Y'know," he said as he worked. "Ya could just swap out half of this stuff for upgraded nanny-tech. If you've got the cash, at least."
Ana grunted from her position flat on her stomach, not moving in the slightest. "Pass," she said flatly. "The chrome works. Bioware would cost me too much, and not buy me long enough."
He shrugged. It was kinda true. He'd heard bioware was cheaper over in Europe, but down in Night City, it was chrome or nothing, unless you were richest of the rich. Oh, the basics even the most down-on-their-luck bastard could usually afford - nanogroomers, some basic detox kits, that kind of thing - but the kind of suite she'd need would cost at least two hundred grand to get into NC. Well outta his league, and that of most doctors.
She could do it, sure - he'd seen the cash she flashed when she absolutely had to - but it'd buy her, what, five years?
Chrome would keep her going just as long for a tenth the price.
He sealed the last connection to her spine, and began the slow and careful process of closing her back up.
"Fine then," he said. "Customer's always right, it's true. But yer sure you don't want to swap the dispenser for a newer model?"
"It's direct-wired," Ana murmured.
"An' thirty years outdated, choomba. I can hack 'em together with the best of 'em but it's still old for what you're putting it through. An' I know you can't afford it, or at least ya don't want' ta pay for it. It's fine. Just keep it in mind an' all."
Tch. She didn't have the best chrome tolerance, but she definitely had the kinda hard-edged will to keep herself together.
Better than some of his other patients.
Or, at least, one.
"What's the word on the big project?" Ana asked, as he began closing up the last incisions.
"That? Still a ways off. I know ya want to vet the components, or at least the computing hardware - but it's a bit difficult to get ahold of those. An' you know what it'll mean, right?"
"I've been waiting for it for seven years, doc. I know."
"Yeah, that's what they all say. And then they go off the edge. Like that kid who went into Arasaka tower."
Ana went even more still than she had before. "David Martinez," she said quietly. "I didn't know you knew him."
Julius couldn't help but laugh. "I built the kid's body. Everything in him save what his mama gave him, that damn Sandy, and an arm cannon he took off a choom of his, I'd gotten for him. Kid was a chrome junkie, always pushing himself further and further. Tryin' ta take the whole world on his shoulders." He sighed. "Then he went off and made himself a legend." He tapped a chrome finger against the back of the woman's deep-dive port. "That's what happens to people who chrome up too hard, too fast. And what you've been contracting me for is definitely too much at once, the way you are now."
He set a speedheal inhaler on the table, and began to clean off his instruments. "Take those, every hour on the hour, don't fall asleep for at least six. You know the drill."
"Yeah, I do, doc," Ana murmured, sitting up and cracking her neck like she hadn't just gone through major surgery. "You got any advice?"
"Never buy a fun time from a woman with chrome legs, she'll crush your pelvis when she finishes," Julius answered, before chuckling at Slavica's glare. "Nah, nah. Hold up."
He tossed her a few Net-links. "Personal server link," he explained. "Check it if ya want, or don't. Supposed to be DRM-locked, but ya shouldn't have too much trouble with that."
Ana cocked her head as she finished pulling her pants on. "To…?"
"Borgware manuals. For getting your head together without all the hard stuff. State of mind and the like. Read up, and I'll forward a package to that rat hole you call an apartment with some gear that should help ya out on top of it."
Her eyes narrowed. "And you're just…giving me this for free?"
"Yeah."
"Did all those XBDs finally rot your brain?"
He bit back the response, turned to face her properly - not like she had anything worth looking at anyway. "Like I said. That Martinez kid…he was one of mine. I thought he had the tolerance, thought he could take it…he couldn't. And he wouldn't chrome down, which coulda saved his gonk ass. When this project's finished, you won't be able to chrome down, you get me? So call it a guilty mind if ya want. It's still free." He shrugged. "Besides, how much have ya spent on me, the past few years?"
"...Enough," she admitted, finishing dressing. "Not like many decent rippers will work on you without painkillers. Or have the expertise to put together this custom job. Speaking of - next down payment should come tomorrow, this job comes through."
He nodded. "Good to know, Slavica. Keep your head down, y'hear?"
"My head's safe behind enough armored plate to take 20-mil rounds, it's your own you should watch for, doc," the young woman shot back as she headed out the door.
Well. At least that one probably wouldn't be a legend. Tin suit or not.
He hoped.
—
The sun was high, the air was clear, and Jacob had a damn good spot on top of a rocky ridge, Lancer purring in the back of his head.
He was the eyes and ears - Ana tapping into his suit's suite for observation, sharing targeting data with the rest of the lance as he remained concealed under a camoplast tarp that would hopefully hide any thermal and EM in addition to blending pretty well into the terrain.
It didn't take a lot of work to make an ACPA look like another boulder, but it did take a lot to hide telltale signs from anyone who might be watching. The Arasaka convoy wasn't supposed to be packing any kind of advanced sensors, but you never knew.
From where he and Lancer were parked, they had a clear view of several miles of road, tele-optics providing crystal-clear sight over the long road, the ocean on one side and the rolling wastes on the other. The coastal highway was in surprisingly decent shape even well past the oil fields - but there were still sections that hadn't held up too well to the steady erosion of decades, or to the literal erosion of the ground beneath it, and as of late NorCal didn't have the funds to maintain it. Especially with Night City insisting it was completely independent. Why spend taxpayer funds needed for an army to keep the NUSA at bay on a bunch of ungrateful corporate stooges?
Well, not his problem. His job for the moment was to wait and watch…and wouldn't you know it, here came the Arasaka convoy, four trucks in single file trundling down the winding road. He clicked three times on the secure radio, warning the others.
Apparently, the major manufacturing plant for 'saka's ACPA was in Japan, and it was easier to ship them by AV to NorCal than to NC directly - something about travel distance on the globe, right? Eh. All that mattered was that they were coming down from the north and their route was easy enough to tell. Trying to figure it out in the west or south Badlands would've been a clusterfuck, here it was simple.
Painting targets would be a bad idea - it'd just warn them of an impending attack. He didn't yet have a shot - the cliffs and the winding road kept obscuring parts of the convoy. But that was something they'd already expected. He was overwatch, not the main punch.
The convoy drew closer.
Lancer's purr rose into a warning growl.
And then his HUD lit up with contacts, as a small horde of ramshackle vehicles came pouring over the dunes. Blue paint jobs, mounted guns, driving like idiots - Wraiths.
"...you have got to be fucking kidding me," Tumble murmured, as Ana started cursing melifluously in Serbian. "What the hell are they doing?"
Jacob didn't need to say anything, as the army of Wraiths got into firing range of the corpo transports. Flathead roof turrets opened up on the Raffen, the Wraiths firing back, and the convoy stalled well short of the point where they'd set up enough mixed HE and EMP bombs to fry their comms and send them tumbling down a cliff.
For a second it looked like the convoy was going to be overwhelmed, as the Wraiths battered the turrets with sheer volume of fire. They'd even brought rocket launchers - one slammed into the cab of the lead truck, blasting it and its occupants to smithereens.
Then the sides of each truck fell down to reveal a pair of gleaming heavyweight ACPA apiece, bristling with weapons.
"Hey Prometheus," he called over comms, as the screech of miniguns and the thumping boom of grenade launchers began to drown out the rattle of small-arms fire. "I owe you a case of beer. It was a trap."
The eight suits - Arasaka Heavy Bs, Model 40s - began to advance, withering fire leaping from their arm-mounted weapons as the heavy lasers affixed to shoulder-mounted turrets began to rip through the ranks of the Wraiths. The bandits recoiled as several of their vehicles were hammered into scrap and dozens of them were ripped apart - and then they charged.
It was actually kinda impressive. There were nearly four hundred of the crazy bastards, and they swarmed over the eight heavyweights like locusts over grain, heedless of the ones ripped apart by the fire sent their way. One suit went down to a tech-rifle fired at point blank through its visor - another was brought down by a triple-barrage of rockets from separate Wraiths. Numbers three and four were dragged down outright by a horde of chromed-up madmen with sledgehammers and electrified picks, and the fifth was rammed into the still-burning lead truck by a truck - while that didn't kill it, the one with the pile driver riding in the back certainly did.
Jacob watched, still not moving, as whoever was in charge of the whole op decided that it wasn't worth the risk. The three remaining Heavy B-40s began to pull back, closing ranks and crushing Wraiths underfoot or smashing them aside with brute force, and piled into one of the remaining trucks, still firing. The truck swerved around the collision at the head of the column and began to accelerate, the suits inside still trading fire with a few pursuing Wraith cars. Two burning husks and a trio smart enough to turn back around later, and the Arasaka truck was pulling away battered but intact, while the Wraiths…fell upon the downed suits like scavenging dogs, chromed muscle working in teams to haul them away and into a few of the more intact trucks.
It looked like…well. It looked like some of the ops the Round Table did whenever they had to salvage something.
"You seeing this, Roadie?" he murmured into the mic, as the Arasaka truck began to pull away - a couple klicks and closing fast.
"They're scavenging. Nomads don't usually bother with ACPA…but we just kicked their gang's tail in," the boss mused. "That…is going to be a problem." She paused. "Zduhac, comms?"
"ECM deployed, boss. Can't find a signal from the ambush site either, Wraiths seem to have figured out jamming pretty well."
"Good. Lancer. Paint 'em."
Lancer did the work, painting individual targets on the truck cab and the three damaged suits inside as they crossed the five-hundred meter mark. The driver reacted instantly, swerving hard - but Cranson's missiles were already in flight, and being fed targeting data instantly thanks to the shiny second-hand high-bandwidth comms systems they all had. The truck cab exploded mid-turn, the blast knocking the suits free of the cargo bed as the vehicle tumbled, and the followup concussion rounds hammered into the earth around them, shaking them up as they struggled to rise. Through all that, the target locks remained - Merlin did good work.
Merlin's other little masterpiece hummed in Lancer's arms as he drew a bead on the closest suit - the monstrous railgun, half Donny's old rifle and half the more powerful components from that Wraith truck they'd totalled days ago, bucked against his suit's shoulder hard enough for Jacob to feel it - and it's soda-can-sized round smashed the Heavy-B40's head to bloody giblets and shattered metal.
Aim at the next. Let the charge build. Fire. Another ACPA went down just as it'd gotten its feet back under it.
Aim - dodge. He rolled to the side, back behind the cover of some boulders as lasers ripped through where he'd been squatting, supporting the suit's weight on its left arm and leg against the backslope. His cover began to heat up slowly - if he'd been working alone, this would be a problem.
Another volley of Cranson's missiles streaked in, following the still-active marker. There was a somewhat distant bang, and the boulder he was hiding behind stopped trembling.
"Target down, Roadie," the former scav replied. "You good, Lancer?"
He checked over everything, Lancer purring again. "Yeah, all good," he voxed. "Thanks for the save, Prometheus."
"Zduhac, Alecto, with me to secure the crash site. Lancer, Prometheus, maintain overwatch in case those Wraiths start checking in on us. Tallyman One, Tallyman Two, prepare to drive up when the site's secure. Three damaged suits is still a decent haul. Let's not overstay our welcome."
She had a point. He clambered back into position, settling his railgun back into place. The Wraiths were still hard at work, mostly looting their own dead now - fifty or sixty out of nearly five hundred.
"If the Wraiths are pulling together heavy metal…think we need to worry about Badlands jobs?" Ana asked.
"Only if we have to go pulling them out of their warrens again, Zduhac," Tumble answered. "They'll need more than that to be a threat."
"Imagine if it'd actually been full of Standard Ks…" Troy mused. "Twenty or so suits would've let them go toe-to-toe with us."
"Small mercies. Hey…ain't this the second time Militech's fallen for the same trap - they got suckered in by that Arasaka cyberskeleton thing, right?" Ana asked. "Prometheus, I think your handler may be an idiot."
"Don't have to tell me twice, Zduhac," the heavyweight replied.
—-
Panam walked into the familiar sound of Saul having an argument.
The only unusual part was it wasn't about her.
"You're serious? You let them go with those suits?"
"Nearly five hundred of them, with anti-tank munitions and at least fifty with enough chrome to be a problem, and apparently no fear of death," a static-distorted voice replied. Ah. Tumble - she recognized that tone.
"Five - Greyback."
"Hm?"
"Leader of the Wraith bands around NC. Smart, but she usually keeps a light hand on her people beyond her personal warband. If she's pulling that many together…" He sighed. "Alright. How bad is it?"
"If she manages to salvage them all, five heavyweight, modernized combat suits, but she'll probably get four at the most - at least one was pretty roughed up. Heavy Bs usually mount a pair of laser arrays, and carry a seven-six-two minigun and a forty-mike grenade launcher on the arms. Depending on what she decides to give them and what they could salvage, could be anything. They've got the carrying capacity to haul artillery, and that's what I'd have them do if I was stealing suits to defend against the Round Table."
"And if they're stealing them to take down my people?" Saul growled.
"How many guns do you have on hand?"
"A hundred and fifty, if we put everyone who could hold iron on the firing line."
"Your people should stock up on AT and heavy weapons. 'saka suits are meant for lower-level corporate conflict, bringing down the hammer on underarmed infantry. Especially their heavyweights. No APS, just thick armor and firepower. You could hammer them with anything up to light railguns and not get anywhere without a lucky shot to the visor or joints, but a single ATGM will open them up."
"And if we're attacked by all the Wraiths in Greyback's warband?"
"Then I've got nothing for you. They'll probably scatter again anyway."
Saul took a deep breath. "Name your price."
"Excuse me?"
"You're mercs. What's the going price for finishing them off before they figure out how to repair and use those suits?"
"More than you could afford even with that corporate payout in your wallet, Aldecaldo," Tumble answered coldly. "My lance is good, but we're not equipped to handle that kind of fight. I called you because it was a courtesy, not to offer my people to die for you. I just watched them tear into eight heavyweights because they didn't fear death and came loaded for bear - I've got five suits and only one of them in the same weight class. Like you said - we're mercs. I'm not going on a run I wouldn't risk even if I had the whole Round Table and your pack at my back."
Saul's fingers curled into fists. "That's your final word?" he said in a carefully controlled tone.
"It is. If it's any consolation, those suits shouldn't be mobile enough to harass your people like a well-piloted medium could. You'll have to fort up heavily, though. And depending on how good their techies are…"
"They might start getting ideas. "
"There's enough old facilities out in the Badlands that don't have anyone watching them. Depending on what they have on hand, and what manufacturing gear they can find…it could get ugly."
Saul nodded slowly. "I'll keep that in mind. If you ever change your own…"
"If you somehow have the power to make this herd of drunken rabid coyotes cooperate under me, enough ACPA to outfit twice their number, and a bunch of borged-up fighters to cover our flanks, call me. Otherwise, advice is all I'm offering."
With that, the Junkerknight cut the call. Saul sagged, leaning against the wall of the command post and running a hand through his beard. He slammed a fist into the side of the wall, nearly making her jump. "God DAMMIT!"
He paused, taking several deep breaths, before visibly calming down, and looking at her. "How long have you been standing there?" he growled.
"Long enough. Besides, pretty sure half the camp heard that last one," Panam answered.
Saul closed his eyes. "Right," he said evenly. "So you know how bad it is."
"I saw them fight, same as you. Four or five suits heavier than that, up to modern tech standards, seems pretty bad."
"I agree."
"But if - what?"
"I said I agree. You're right. May I never have to say it again." He took another deep breath. "I know we don't see eye to eye, Panam. But I need you to do a few things for the family."
She folded her arms. "...I'm listening," she said carefully.
Saul, admitting she was right? The news must've shaken him up more than she'd thought.
"First off, get ahold of Dakota. The family's flush at the moment - we need armament more than we do eddies now, and she's the only one with the contacts to pull it off on short notice from locals. And with the maps of what's abandoned around here and what used to be in it."
Panam clicked her tongue. "The prewar state forts and the like?"
"Yeah. And the older ones, all the way back to the 20s. Find out what might be salvageable. No treasure hunts - solid intel."
"Easy. What else?"
"I'm going to need you to take a trip into Night City. Tumble's lance tolerates you. Offer your services, for you and a few other techs, and see if you can make yourselves useful."
She raised an eyebrow. "Are you asking me to spy for you?"
"I'm not a corp. You can play this as upfront as you want. But we need something to even the odds." He smiled. "You heard what she said. The whole Round Table, twice their number in suits, and borged up fighters for her flanks. You take care of the first, I'll see if the clan can scrounge up the second, and we'll see if she's happy with two out of three."
"...not the worst plan you've ever come up with."
"It's about the only one. Now get moving. We'll be breaking camp soon - Wraiths have been sniffing too close for comfort now that we know what they could drop on us. We need to find a more defensible base and we need to find it fast."