Chapter 65: Corpo holes, the best kind!

  “The best hole is a corpo hole! Bullets or bang, that’s how we role!”

  –Samurai Rapsody, during a concert/hostage situation in a corporate boardroom, 2040.

  ***

  “Okay, so, that’s a corpo hidey-hole?” I asked Altany, wanting to be clear on our situation. There was a pretty hard to spot hidden entrance on the side of a hex-plate’s pillar. It looked like some sort of… concrete tick on its side with a discreet door. The corpos were probably hiding somewhere under that in a dug-out hole or underground facility of some kind.

  According to the information we’ve received from Millenium Animal, yes.

  “Inhabited at that…” I pondered, standing next to the holotable in my awesome APC. I’d have to give the guy a massive bonus for finding this out! Looking at this place, I couldn’t have guessed what it was. Hell, I might not have spotted that weird cloaked entrance. It didn’t give off IR or EM anomalies, which was actually pretty impressive if there were people down there!

  Yes.

  “... and they have no idea we’re here…”

  You’re going to throw yourself into a trap again, aren’t you?

  “No! I just think that… well, we have access if they give permission! I don’t give a fuck what research or whatever they’re doing down there! I just need to go there and say…”

  Prepping the nanites.

  “Oh fuck off! We don’t have to go on a killing spree!”

  Of course.

  Her tone had the condescension of a master petting their dog after they did something really dumb but amusing.

  Alex made it worse. “Two points says it’s an explosive.”

  “Oh come on!”

  “You can’t just call any explosive!” Felix protested. “I’m putting five on shaped charges.”

  “A place like that? They probably got access to wilder stuff, right? I’m putting three points on energy weapons.” Vincent countered, to my eternal annoyance.

  “Would you stop betting!? It’s not insane to not blow the door in from the get go!”

  “Of course, boss.” Francis said, my only loyal enforcer. “I’m putting five points on railgun.” The fucker said, adding a nail to my coffin…

  “If this goes wrong, I’m blaming all of you for jinxing me!” I told them with narrowed eyes.

  Johnny Law patted me on the shoulder. “It ain’t crazy to try and not kill people…”

  “Thank you!”

  “... but If yall don’t mind, I’ll stay here… and put ten points on demo-charges.”

  “Go fuck yourself.”

  I disembarked from the stealthed APC in a huff. This wouldn’t go wrong, I just wanted to help them for fuck’s sake!

  I slowly, non-threateningly, walked towards the hidden entrance with my hands held up. They didn’t need to know that it wouldn’t slow me down much. The ground was rather flat, so they got to see me coming from a distance. I waited to be right in front of the door before addressing them. “Yo! Here to help, sorry to dis–”

  *BOOM!*

  Did you know shaped charges throw a jet of molten copper at between mach ten and thirteen? Enough power to kill a tank! That shit gets through your armor, the spalling and temp-spike mean a pretty guaranteed kill. I’d definitely be dead if it wasn’t for the nanites!

  However, in my humble opinion, the extra massive explosion turning every bit of concrete into supersonic shrapnel was a bit much! The shaped charge hurt like hell, but the demo-charges are what threw me back a few meters.

  I regained my senses on the floor, buried in quite a bit of rubble. That fucking shaped charge was aimed very precisely at my fucking solar plexus! The dog dicking thing made it past my god damn armor and filled my fucking chest with molten horse-cock sucking copper! It didn’t feel great!

  “You alright, boss?” Francis asked, pretty unconcerned –which I had mixed feelings about!–.

  That was a good question. That fucking jet lost a lot of momentum getting through not only my plating, but also the enhanced-chainmail, entropic gel and my reinforced muscles and bones. It splashed against my spinal-armor, spreading that fucking super heated metal all over! I felt the burn behind my shoulderblades, at the back of my hips, all over my ribcage and the list went on.

  When my lungs were healed enough to breathe, after satisfying my body’s screaming calls for oxygen, I answered. “Yup… yup yup yup, I’ll be fine, gimme a sec... Those fuckers cost me points in repairs and their fucking shit hurt like a dead goat fucker, the absolute cat fisting assholes! Altany, could you return the favor?”

  Of course.

  My railgun assembled and pushed through the layer of broken concrete covering me to aim at the direction I’d been thrown from. A truly massive round fired and the recoil pushed me out of the rubble some. Had to say, the effect I imagined on the fuckers who attacked me without provocation made me feel a bit better!

  Air burst directional claymore ammunition. The shell aims to arrive above a specific target and detonates its directional warhead. It acts like a self-aiming claymore, but with roughly five times as many projectiles and much stronger explosives. I did not wish to collapse the downward shaft, but I believe it handled any upward-aiming resistance. You should hurry before all evidence is destroyed.

  “Oh, shit, right, good idea.” I finished pushing myself out and jogged towards the bastards. “Johnny, I’ll drop first, come right after me, I’ll take the punishment, you deal the damage, deal?”

  “Sounds just dandy partner! I’ll keep ‘em alive, ‘bought some new freedom seeds to try out!” That actually got a chuckle out of me, which helped.

  Pretty quickly, I arrived at the puckmarked shaft, aka a freight elevator with quite a lot of space, plenty enough for large goods transportation. If it hadn’t been down already, I felt fairly certain it would have been shredded! Even from twenty meters above the platform, I could tell the thing was fucked ten ways to sunday. Wouldn’t be looting this place so easily.

  There were quite a few corpses down there, along with destroyed equipment meant to shoot at me as I looked down.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  Welp, time to drop in, literally! I just took a step, falling down the shaft, and prepared for a cool as shit landing!

  ***

  Fuck fuck fuck! If samurais knew this place existed, they were so fucking fucked! Could it be a coincidence? Probably not… He could only hope. This venture had been profitable beyond belief! Did the last shipment get noticed by some of the scanners? Did the client sell them out?

  With this level of risk and secrecy, Jonathan got a percentage, which meant it was in his best interest to make sure they weren’t discovered, and if they were? To take care of it, one way or another.

  He nervously tapped his foot behind the railgun emplacement, nervous but not too scared. That shaped charge and those explosives should have done the trick, but he mostly worried about that guy’s buddies! Someone fired that shell and they might come down for revenge…

  Well, whoever they were, no one could survive the type of heavy armament aimed down this hall! They had HMGs, two dozen soldiers with assault rifles, a few railguns, enough to fuck up an army basically! Cost a pretty penny, but it’d be worth it.

  Suddenly, an armored form hit the ground with a thunderous ‘boom!’, one fist down and on one knee! Some kind of pure metal demon created with protector tech! God, the elevator platform’s steel bent with that landing, making a small crater of twisted metal!

  “Holy fucking shit…” It was that damn samurai, the one that approached the entrance! How in the ever living fuck was that fucker still standing!? Could this thing be a drone? Might explain why it kept moving after all they threw at it?

  Fuck, alright, the purge protocols were in effect, they’d just have to last a little longer. Could probably just stall, it’d be alright… “Argh, fuck this fucking landing pose shit… Whatever, hey, hi! Could you please just fucking surrender? I’m not here for you, just got a hive to destroy, there’s no need for all this violence. This already cost me points and hurt like a bitch. The longer you last, the more annoyed I’ll be. Hell, that superhero landing might’ve even– SERIOUSLY!?”

  The heavy machinegun firing explosive rounds opened fire too fucking soon! Gunner probably panicked and… Yeah, couldn’t blame him for that. He told every emplacement and soldier to fire at will, but it was too late. The guy had some kind of insane samurai shield! The railgun they got had been made for rapid-fire, so the velocity wasn’t good enough for that level of armor. It’d be fine, they just had to keep him pinned for…

  Something hit his chest and sent electricity all throughout his body! Every weapon stopped shooting and soldiers dropped like flies…

  The pain coursing through him had to be from more than just a taser round, some kind of poison? He couldn’t fucking move! Even his cybernetics refused to answer his commands, fuck! “Wow, those rounds ain’t no joke, I’m mighty thankful, Bytal. Yall stay put, don’t try anythin’ and you’ll be fine.”

  They were all so fucked…

  ***

  Bringing Johnny along had been a great idea! He subdued every threat like it was nothing with those LTLs, fired before anyone could do anything more than scream in fear. They were some semi-expensive esoteric rounds. Given his catalogue was focused on high-velocity, these had to be light, made to penetrate armor and deploy a payload inside the body without massive hydrostatic shock. They used electricity, poison and nanites to subdue anyone, no matter how augmented!

  I raised the volume on my speakers to deafening levels, sent my drone somewhere else to share the message and started my little speech. “Yo! All of your defenders are down, there’s nothing you can do to stop us, just fucking surrender. I’m not here for you, so just calm the fuck down and we’ll be out of your hair real quick.”

  So far, this whole operation’d been mostly bloodless thanks to my partner. I just wanted to destroy a hive, no need for anyone to die!

  I walked through corridors like I owned the place. It didn’t take long to find a few computers to put remote shunts into. Most corridors were fairly tight, space economy in action. There were labs, barracks, leisure places, everything to live down here for an extended period. The decor was… bunker-like, very corpo ‘destroy your will to live’ style. Just brutalist concrete and low lighting. Fuck, even before the incursion we at least had graffiti in our building!

  However, a specific series of halls were much taller and wider, which I’d guess was built this way to get something big in and out. I didn’t give a fuck about their research or whatever, but since they’d been dicks, I’d check it out and grab all the info! Might be able to blackmail some corpo fucks with this shit.

  After arriving at a big, heavily reinforced metal door, I looked to the side into an observation room, all scientists face down on the floor, complying nicely. A glance at what was being observed and… “Altany, can you get into their augs?” My voice sounded… off. I had a bad feeling about this…

  Connect your hardline cable.

  I did, hacking nerds one after the other, calmly switching when Altany told me to. I’d already put a remote shunt into the terminal and my brain hitchhiker could easily work on both. “Is… That’s not what I think it is, right?” I asked, profoundly hoping I was wrong. It couldn’t be, right?

  I suspect you are thinking in the right direction. Here:

  I looked at highlighted sections of reconstructed data that Altany reassembled after stopping their deletion protocols midway. Yeah, this was… exactly what I thought. Actually, after reading further, I found out that it was worse… way, way worse. Fuck. “Send that to Johnny, ask him to take care of the rest…”

  Then, I shot the three scientists a good dozen times, each. I took my time, making sure they couldn’t run but also, I just wanted… Something, no idea what. It just felt right. My feelings didn’t get in the way, finding no conflict whatsoever with my ethics. Shredder shells created a massive amount of gore, each helping me feel just a tiny little bit better.

  After that, shots started sounding out at high-speed outside, lots of them. My partner probably felt the same as I did. “Call Laser Jack.” The data wasn’t just concerning, it was…

  Connecting.

  Their augs rang four times, which should have annoyed me a bit but I felt frozen, as if standing in some sort of gel. “Hey, good to hear from you Mad Panda! Sorry for the delay, I was in the middle of a few meetings. What can I do for you?”

  “You know those locations you gave me?” I asked, my voice somewhat hollow. Was this what being in shock sounded like?

  “Yes? You’ve been doing admirably clearing them out, no xenos leaked, little public attention, I’m very grateful! I know you gain from it, but you’ve been doing high quality work!”

  “Uhuh, anyway, I’m at this location and hum… I’m feeling a bit mass-murdery and I need you to talk me the fuck down…” The numbing slowly faded away, leaving me with boundless rage I had to work HARD at containing.

  The corpo-samurai’s demeanor changed on a dime. “That sounds pretty serious…”

  “Oh, we passed serious like… six levels of fucking fucked the fuck up ago.” My hands shook slightly, adrenaline and cortisol coursing through my veins in massive quantities. “Altany, could you send him this chlamydia ridden goat fucking shit?” I was having trouble parting my gritted teeth.

  After a few moments, clearly using some brain augs to get through it fast, he continued somberly. “I’m not going to talk you down. I’m only going to ask permission to help accomplish the mission. This… We’ll protect more civilians with more samurais involved. If you need to blow off steam I have a few targets to go to first that wouldn’t alert them right away. We don’t want those responsible running before we get there. “ Dude probably had experience with handling pissed off samurai given his attitude.

  I nodded. “I’d like that.” My fists shook with the need to put them through… anything, everything, something that would pose resistance, that would feel satisfying to destroy…

  “Also, some of those dates, well, I’d like some other samurais with you when you handle them.”

  I tried to take a deep breath but my muscles were just too taut for that sort of shit. “I agree…”

  “I’d like a Family spec-ops investigation team to go to your location, would you allow them? They have an information and data recovery focused samurai.”

  I agreed once more, not giving a singular fucking shit at the moment. My feud with them didn’t matter. If they could help me find them, ALL of them, I’d fucking blow the corpo fucks… “Please send me those targets, I… really fucking need to kill shit before I do something regrettable.”

  “Of course, the team will be here soon, it would help if you leave at least one enforcer to guard the site”

  I nodded, complied with whatever the fuck and hung up. “Johnny?” I said in our comms, my voice shaky with uncontrollable rage… “I’m uh… going to go kill something…”

  “Yall mind if I join in?” He asked, voice lower and angrier than I’d ever heard him.

  “Sure, let’s go, got a hive nearby…” My feet damaged concrete during my run for the APC. I felt an uncontrollable need to run, move, act, destroy! My armor, made to act as part of my body, responded to my mental state, claws and spikes appearing without my conscious control.

  Apparently, some minor corp made a quick buck selling hive-starting kits, with instructions! Business had been good, to my eternal hatred.

  Most importantly, among those dates and locations, extrapolated with growth-time, one entry matched Peach-Trees’s incursion…