Interlude 3: Property damage

  Laser Jack really, really wanted a drink. Then he remembered he was a samurai and everyone in the room could go fuck themselves if they had a problem with it!

  ‘Old fashioned, please…’

  Of course, would you like something for your headache?

  ‘Yes… Thank you…’

  He didn’t tend to buy drinks for points. As a non-combat specialist samurai, Jack didn’t spend his time in constant battle, accumulating millions of points and all that. He could sure as hell fight, but still. Points were a rare resource to be treasured. Yet… He needed a drink.

  Also, the protectors made damn fine drinks. It always tasted like the best version of that drink he ever had. At that moment, it could be considered a necessary evil.

  He ordered a bottle of it, premixed, so he could have more than one if necessary. His implants could nullify the alcohol if needed. In his line of work, an anti-poison suite just made too much sense. Fucking hell he did not want to make that call.

  It was, as always, the best damn old fashioned he ever had. The headache relieving stuff in it might have played a role.

  ‘Call her…’

  Connecting you now…

  The sewers were so thickly covered in buildings, pipe material, radiation shielding and whatever the fuck under the city that only AI-to-AI direct communication would work.

  “Oh for… Ah! God damn it what!?” Well, Jackal was in a good mood.

  “Hey, Jackal, I have some news…” and in 3… 2… 1…

  “Oh you got news!? I sure as fuck hope so! I’ve been crawling through rat infested tunnels with H4zmat for fucking hours without seeing a single god damn alien! I had to buy a fucking shit skimmer Laser Jack! A shit-skimmer! That cost me points! I spent fucking points! On a god forsaken shit-skimmer! Do you realize how fucking insane that is?!”

  Yeah, as bad as he thought. Not surprising, given his specialty, but that didn’t really help now, did it? He had to deal with her since, as the highest tier, Jackal acted as ‘chaperone’ of the sewer crawlers down there. An unknown hive exploration required supervision after all. “Jackal, do you want the news?” He really needed her to…

  “Yes I want the fucking news! For the love of everything that matters in this universe if you don’t have news for me I’ll fucking castrate you and whatever fucking idiot is running intel at that stupid fucking…!” He had to stop her or she’d keep going for a good long while. Laser Jack currently had a lot of work to do and no time for this shit.

  “You’re info’s being fucked with!” Talking to Jackal without cursing was like having no inflection to your voice. It just made you sound like you were droning on to her.

  There was a bead of silence on the other end, before a single, terrifyingly calm word came through. “What?”

  Laser Jack relayed his findings about the intel fuckery, which were less conclusive than he’d like. Easy to see with the proper information, like a page full of dots there to connect. The problem?

  There were less dots than a plan this fucking stupid should have. That meant a few things, most of them only possibilities, all of them very fucking bad.

  Those included that the people in charge were nominally smart and just didn’t know enough about samurais to be properly terrified. He didn’t like that option since it made things difficult.

  The even shittier option? Friends within The Family… That possibility looked more and more likely. Hell, Jack even had a good idea on who. One video call with his social warfare programs active and he’d know. Fuck.

  The last purge had been a while ago. Always very messy for him. All the political ramifications, the blackmail, the friends of friends, the political appointees getting beheaded and having to deal with their families being mad and causing trouble.

  That’s not even speaking of the horrible things this type of shit did to the Family’s reputation, their public image and oh so much more! It meant less samurais signed up, for one.

  He’d do his best to avoid as much of it as possible. With enough evidence, Laser Jack could just blackmail them and keep this under wraps. Most importantly, they had to keep this as subtle as possible to prevent a massive scandal for The Family.

  “Demanding permission for maximum property damage…” Jackal was apparently at her most dangerous level of pissed off! “Jackal, no!”

  “Laser Jack, I’m not asking, I’m telling you, as a courtesy, I’m finding that fucking hive right mother fucking now, especially the people containing it. If there’s a few kilometers of sewers between me and the fuckers, that’s too fucking bad. I’m buying a fucking shit-tank if I need to.” Her tone was perfectly even. His social warfare software constantly screamed alerts at him!

  “Woah! This hive is fucking huge Jackal! There are double digits and over a thousand singles have made it up the tower!”

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  “All the more reasons to buy a shit-tank.” God, it felt like handling a pinless live grenade!

  “No! H4zmat isn’t ready for this kind of heat and frankly, neither are you! At least regroup with the other sewer crawlers! You know your fucking chances are better that way for fuck’s sake!”

  “The moment you poke a hole in whatever defenses they erected you’ll be facing a horde! Fucking wait for the higher tier samurais I’m sending down there with you!” They were barely higher tier but he needed to delay her and prevent suicide by stupidity!

  He could hear breathing on the other end, perfectly calm sounding. Nothing else for a few seconds. On the edge of his seat, after just a small wait…

  “You got two hours.” The call disconnected. Laser Jack let go of a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding. Samurais might have died for this kind of stupid shit. The few higher tier samurai available had to get down there fast.

  Oh sure, he could sound the general alarm and maybe get Deux Ex or some other high tier down here. However, they’d probably arrive way too late to matter and this would turn into a massive mess The Family’s reputation wouldn’t recover easily from!

  Family forces couldn’t be sent to the building because desperation would cause the idiots to start a gun battle! It’d be Family forces versus the owners of the building! What the fuck would that look like to the public!? Even sending Samurais would cause a massive incident!

  Really, Johnny Law probably just ran in too fast for them to realize in time! No, sending the couple more powerful samurais into the sewers was the right call, they could engage discretely without any long range cameras picking it up. On that subject…

  ‘Alright, next item on the fucking agenda. Call Lacroix. Make sure my software is running, I want to know if he’s involved and how much.’

  Of course. He’s in a virtual meeting, would you like for me to interrupt?

  That caused him to pause for the moment…

  ‘Can you determine what the meeting is about?’

  No. His breathing patterns, facial expressions, heart rhythm and speech patterns do not match with the subject he is discussing. I believe he may be using some form of code that I cannot determine the origin of.

  None of the words appear to be emphasized enough to be codewords hence it may be a pre-determined cypher I do not have the key of based upon appearance, flower arrangement, desk item positioning, tongue…

  ‘Alright, I get it. Interrupt him. Close down his connection and switch it to me.’

  Might as well make sure. The program would determine after at most a dozen questions. A good liar could, maybe, make it to…

  “Ah! Laser Jack, good to see you! Is there any way I can assist?”

  GUILTY

  ‘Wow, that was fast!’

  It didn’t take protector tech to determine but Jack liked being sure. Oh, the man looked perfectly calm. Good liar and all that, but there was a clear air about him. A sensation most people failed to recognize or pay attention to. A deep instinct that tells you ‘fucking asshole doing fucked up shit’ loudly and clearly if you’re willing to listen.

  “So, Lacroix, it seems we’ve got a problem.” Laser Jack said with his sadistic smile.

  “Oh? Anything I can do to help?” He really liked this toying, the dance of two people discussing important things, switching between predator and prey each. Actually, now that he was a samurai, Laser Jack rarely acted the prey. He liked being a predator!

  “Of course, why do you think I contacted you?” There was an ever so slight tightening at the corner of the eye. No one would notice it except for him. Investing a lot of points in perception and mind enhancing mods had its uses.

  “Well, you called, so you tell me.”

  “Well, you see, there’s this situation. Peach Trees. We’ve been getting bad info in the sewers. I mean, Jackal’s a nightmare to deal with on this one. She threatened to castrate the entire info team. I mean, honestly, I’m not one hundred percent sure she would actually do it. Doesn’t swing that way and I get the feeling she doesn’t want all the disgusting handling it would take. Hell, I wouldn’t.” Another twitch, ever so slightly less subtle. In the ring finger this time, probably a suppressed subconscious protective reflex.

  Laser Jack’s sadistic smile became more subtle now, just a slight tilt at the corner of his lips. That was mostly for anyone trying to gather evidence later.

  No one should be able to record or listen in with what he had for security, but always best to assume you’d be seen or caught. Best to avoid lies since it’s what buries you. Jackal did, in fact, threaten to castrate those people after all.

  “I mean, that would be quite the mess. I’d prefer to avoid that. Could you help me avoid that mess? I believe you were partially involved in the information that was given, right?” He really loved the game of subtext and hidden messages, but they didn’t have time for that. Best to avoid beating around the bush with this situation.

  “I-I believe I can help prevent a mess, yes.” He had a very quick and subtle stutter. Well, subtle to a normy but a blazing beacon to him. “Good.”

  ‘Cut the call’

  A classic power move. It helped establish dominance. Lacroix needed to know the pecking order and how much trouble he might have to deal with.

  Lacroix, as a high level official, mostly justified his continued existence for political reasons. Many members of The Family were there for the same reasons most corpos were in corporations.

  It was just the only way to operate a corporation. Laser Jack and the other samurais tried to clean up the trash and make sure things ran smoothly. Not well enough, apparently.

  What the fuck could he do for Mad Panda though… Fitting name that. Laser Jack had to admit, it fit the man well from everything he could tell. That samurai would be considered violent as hell by samurai standards, but the right kind of violent, Samurai-violent.

  There were quite a few like that. His favorite might be Hanzer. The man had gone on a rampage after a scandal involving very powerful people involved in child trafficking. No one knew how many he put down, but the public was damn happy about it! Well, most of it, but the ones that weren’t… yeah, no.

  ‘Any activity online? Another virus?’

  Scanning… There is a series of smart daemons that appear to share the signature of this particular sibling AI and their catalogues.

  ‘Smart daemons? Must have spent quite a few points on Cyber Warfare. What are they doing?’

  Gathering funds and evidence, rather subtly, impressively enough. They set up a few companies, a corpo-sec contractor firm and a corporate clearing group. They are also creating a short-sale position on the building.

  It took a few seconds, but when Laser Jack put the pieces together, he started laughing.

  “It’s official, I like him! Got his heart in the right place, samurai-violent and devious as hell! Dangerous combination. Let’s say we help do some damage to those asshole’s properties…”