Godclads

Chapter 5-9 Subtle

A run is not about meticulous planning but objectives.

A planner's task is not to anticipate every possibility down to the most minor detail but to layer every preventative measure possible to ensure that the team is always the one with the momentum and to ensure their extraction before the tides can turn.

For the group's ultimate survival in the face of ever-shifting circumstances, however, the charge lies with each and every member to do their part. Selection of assets in New Vultun comes into a few categories. Cheap and replaceable at the bottom. Powerful but expensive at the top.

Despite common advice, there is merit to possessing a roster of "feed" operatives for a blender-op. If nothing else, their deaths will serve as a decent roadmap for your actual squires down the line...

-[Redacted], Chapter 12 of The Troubleshooter's Doctrine

5-9

Subtle

Captain Aseleri of the Mawfarer II was an easy woman to find.

It took less than three hours for someone bearing her visual and audio markers to be flagged by the No-Dragon's Recollector. The phantasmal engine's scans ran only four thousand imps thanks to being narrowed down to the gutters of Mazza's Junction and had located several figures of note from Avo's mem-data.

The captain and her crew were daily customers at the local circuits, especially a moderately-known establishment called the Butcher's Lair, which hosted special showcases on different nights, ranging from beast-on-beast battles with the creatures sculpted from bidded designs to mini-Crucibles in which new bioforms were showcased to potential buyers via their efficiency at killing badly armed survivors.

From the Second Fortune, Draus had procured a "secondhand" Doldrum class commercial aerovec. It was a century out of date in terms of design and Avo suspected the delightful scent of brain matter still wafting in the air belonged to the car's former owner. Judging from all the past-due bills stuffed in their glove-box, their probable demise reeked of being caused by a debt-related issue.

Still, it served their needs most nicely, with five passenger gimbals within its confines, a full spectrum optical array for three-hundred-and-sixty-degree situational awareness, and a bead-wrapped locus that looked more like a piece of decor.

"Heh," Draus had chuckled upon interfacing her ghosts with the locus, "safe travels." She shot a look at the ceiling, the spinning shine of her augmented eyes picking up something Avo's couldn't. "Sang consider it a bad omen to ride in somethin' stained with the stench of death, you know?"

"Can't like me much then?" Avo said.

The Regular snorted. "Nah. They don't see much difference between you and a particularly vicious nu-hound variant."

The inception-assassination they were plotting could barely be considered a run. It was also an operation that Draus reserved the right to pull the plug on should something even feel sour to her. Prior to their departure, Avo pulled street models of the local area for study.

The Butcher's Lair's entrance was right next to the elevators of a formerly abandoned megablock turned Syndicate gutter market. It was placed that deep down to keep it far and away out from the notice of official authorities. From the way it was described, it looked to be a sort of "neutral" territory between the Syndicates; a place of numbness for gangers, wagers, and street nomads alike.

The enforcement of local rules, then, was enforced by a loose collective of a mixed band of peacekeepers provided by the Sovereignty's major Syndicates. Groups like the Scalpers, Dead Lotus, Maharada's Glaives, and the Neon Bleeders were all named as primary sponsors.

Conflux went unregarded, a silent note before its rivals.

Avo wondered how Mirrorhead tolerated that. From the actions of his former owner, the man couldn't tolerate any will that wasn't his own. But then again, perhaps that was why the other Godclad didn't participate. Because he would have to share his toys and profits. Mirrorhead did have that stench to him--the want for relative dominance over absolute gains.

Traffic ran clogged through the arteries sprawling across the Spine of the Warrens, with each change of sky-lane inflicting a micro-tax. Syndicates owned different parts of the city, and the veins of public transit were just another piece of the pie.

Just one level above the anarchy of the gutters, a faint mimicry of civilization was being attempted by a group of thugs cleaved between legitimacy and criminality. By technicality, there were Guilders down here. District councils. Local constables and Guild-sanctioned security. But in function, they wouldn't be seen until one went a level above to reach the Throat.

By the point someone rose to Light's End, the stench of the underlayers would be choked off by the plate beneath them, and proper Paladin-enforced order would take hold, and proper thoughtscans to parse the Fated and FATELESS would soon follow.

It took a total of a hundred and ten imps for them to finally slip over the lip of Layer One. As they slipped past the threshold ruled by the Syndicates and the roiling darkness lashed with fractals of neon and speckled with intermittent bursts of gunfire. Where they descended, few other aerovecs followed, and those that did were armed and armored.

The gutters was something between a sprawling wound and a doorway after all. Down here, the darkness came alive at times, hacking out its daily supply of feral ghouls and other horrors leftover from the Uprising like phlegm. And that wasn't even getting to the gangers and Syndicates trying to expand their corners.

Draus pulled up the DeepNav maps Avo downloaded of the local area. The stalls of the gutter market dotted the steps leading up into the foyer of the block, while quick-fabbed bridges and watchtowers housed turret drones meant to keep the peace. Spottings of Syndicate grown nu-dogs also displayed a second layer of security--one that was meant to prevent the use of bombs or bioweapons.

As they slowed to finish their approach, a thousand rings of shimmering thoughtstuff greeted Avo. Most of the crowd wore their thoughts naked. Too poor to afford even a secondhand Meta, too poor to afford wards. Good. That would narrow the search radius considerably, with the captain being one with their mind properly encased in phantasmal armor.

"So," Draus said, "from what we got, we know that our to-be-victim here is a nightly visitor of this here Butcher's Lair. Seeing that we're running close to dusk now, I think we oughta make this run all quiet-like. Snuff her nice and quiet before she makes it down. Took a peek at the body density in the Den and it ain't pretty. No easy kills there."

That was fine with Avo. Ultimately, all he wanted was two things: the captain dead and her phantasmics made his. The thought of cracking her skull and draining her ghost like it was yolk appealed to him, of course, but he wasn't going to sacrifice surprise for a more poetic retribution.

Not when he could still drink the details of the slaves he failed to save from her mind. Or use her mem-codes to raid her ship later.

He just needed to resist eating her was all.

"Anyways, I reckon you gotta be the one to do the snuffin', Avo, seein' as you can 'eat' her ghosts and all," Draus said, displeasure clear on her face. With a thought, she marked a particularly accessible lane leading toward the interior of the block. "If she shows tonight, that's where we take her. Now, I'm--"

"Won't eat her," Avo said. He held up a clawed hand before Draus and willed his blood to coalesce, five streams spilling out from his claw tips to form a chip of glinting metal. "Just going to burst a blood vessel. In her head."

Kae nodded enthusiastically at that. "T-that's a great... great use of a Heaven! Low... low Rend for... for high return! Very clever, Avo."

Avo chuffed, pleased with his idea. Social creature or not, it was good to finally have one's ideas acknowledged, especially by one as experienced as Agnos, broken though her mind was.

Draus flicked a flat glance over him and the Agnos. Awkwardly, she pulled a small injector gun out from the veil of her holocoat. "Was... gonna ask Kae to give you some Manticore to use on her, but... yeah, I guess this works too."

"Sound disappointed, Reg," Avo taunted. He leaned in closer, his tone growing mockingly conspiratorial. "See lots of Syndicate enforcers. Scum. Slavers. Could also make this more eventful. Festive."

"Oh!" Kae said. "That... there might... might just be enough lives down there to... give you enough thaums to qualify your... qualify your frame as a Second Sphere. Powers... powers of ten. Go from sub... sub-hundred thaums to... to a thousand."

Her giggle at the end made her sound like she was talking about anything other than a massacre.

Draus sighed. "Look. I like killin' half-strands and Syndicate types, but by Jaus' cold fuckin' corpse, can we do this professionally? Yeah? 'Cause we already got eyes lookin' out for us, and I don't want to be found because you," She pointed at Avo, who visibly struggled against the urge to bite her finger off, "see this as an all-you-can-eat buffet, and you," her finger turned to Kae, who beamed at being included, "can't seem to stop encouraging him."

"You were more fun in the Crucible," Avo said. "What happened to that Draus? She liked killing people."

A sharp breath slipped out from Draus' nostrils, the sound dangerous, like a blade rasping free from a scabbard. "Again: I still like killin' scum. It's what I do. It's what I've been doin' since Highflame 'retired' me. But right now, we need be real focused with our snuffin'. Can you do that? Are we concurred? 'Cause if we ain't, I can still turn this 'vec around and back to the Fortune. Been a while since I slept and that sounds mighty nice right now."

"Fine," Avo said.

Kae, after a beat of confusion, nodded along. "But... what if things... things go wrong? Can he... can we kill everyone th-then?"

Avo grunted sagely. "A good question."

"No. No, it's not," Draus said, her forehead wrinkling. "Avo: no snuffin' who I don't tell you to snuff. Kae, stop encouraging him. We're down here to get a Ghostjack--despite my reservations--and if you don't want said reservations to be spited so hard I call this run off, we do this clean and neat? Is that clear?"

Avo grunted again, more begrudgingly this time. "Yeah."

"C-can I have a gun?" Kae asked.

"No, you're gonna... be our eyes in the sky and extraction," Draus said. "In case things go wrong."

Kae blinked. "We... we're not landing?"

Draus expanded the holo-feeds to show all the visual data captured by the aerovec's optics. "You see those dots there?"

Kae narrowed her eyes. "They're... everywhere..."

"They're gangers. You wanna get our ride jacked by a ganger?"

"N-no," the Agnos said.

"Well, alright then, we need someone to circle the block. It's an important job. Gives us overwatch."

"Could just use my Whisper," Avo muttered. He did his best not to notice Draus' glare.

"O... okay," Kae said. "I... I'll do... do my best to be... your eyes in the sky."

"That's all we ask," Draus said. "We cast into the vec's locus when we need you. That fails, switch to your coldtech frequency. You know the one."

Kae nodded. "Y-yeah."

With a thought, Draus opened the doors. Air rustled in, bringing with it that familiar gutter ambiance of gunfire, screaming engines, and distantly booming music bearing so much bass that it could probably shake dust free from water. Just ten feet below were the cracked roof windows of an abandoned G-Station.

"Alright, Avo," Draus said. "I'll drop first. You follow after."

"Like before," he said.

"Yep," Draus said. "'Cept you ain't such a soft-target no more." She jabbed him lightly in the shoulder and stepped over the edge, plunging down with the pull of gravity.

"Avo," Kae said. He turned. "We... we should be far enough from... from the Sovereignty that most thaums and ghosts flow... uh... ghost flow directly to you. Physical contact is... is most optimal for... for your Frame, but... but proximity should work. So... so a ranged option... is-is also theoretically possible."

"Good to know," Avo said.

She smiled and gave him a thumbs-up. Something about her vulnerability made her seem deeply out of place down here; something else about how fast she warmed to his presence ever since he mentioned his interest in trying to fix her mind made him wonder if she was always so trusting.

Bearing such thoughts in mind, he leaped down after Draus, trying to imagine who the Agnos was before the unmaking of her mind.

A carpet of glass cracked in a chorus as he landed. Draus was already peeking along a corner, the microdrone she was tinkering with earlier hovering over her shoulder.

Following in her stead, he cast out his Whisper and splashed his perception over all that was around them. A few gangers in a nearby alley; half-dressed, half-chromed, poorly armed. Across the street, the homeless mingled with the joyfiends, looking for new scavenge to sell on the streets. What caught his eye were the warded minds of six holo-veiled figures, their forms veiled but their movements limping and staggered.

Street squires. That was Avo's guess. Freelance mercenaries that worked for imps and nothing but.

"Path ahead's cleared," Draus said. "Think there's a cadre of squires passin' the streets in front of the market. They look green enough to shoot anyone who looks armed."

Avo grinned. That would give him a reason to fight back. "I'm unarmed."

"You're also tall, thin, and move all jittery. Avoid them before we post up. Don't need them rememberin' us in any way, you synced?"

"Yeah. Not my first dive."

"Ain't a dive, Avo, it's a run. Shit can get stupid right-quick during runs." She turned to look at him again. "And I wasn't shittin' you about the pullin' the plug. If I say abort, we abort. Better that we let 'er slip than get exposed ourselves."

"Yeah," Avo agreed. The beast inside him didn't. Four hundred pounds of meat back at the Second Fortune and already it was beginning to itch again. It was as if all the recent killings had opened a chasm in his appetite.

They exited the G-Station like two specters, their bodies lined with the coned translucence of neon as ads slid over them, bathing the world around them in light. Across the street, four guards stood at watch outside the perimeter of the block. The walls of the structure were plated with additional sheets of plassteel, plugging up any rents or fissures leftover by the war, and leaving only the entrance accessible.

Still, it was a better option than taking the typical route of using the elevator itself. One that required the Syndicates to vet and confirm your identity before allowing you entry. Not exactly what Avo or Draus needed right now.

Scents warred in the air, exotic meats and different gene-spliced meals trickling forth from the market. The gutters themselves carried the same combo it always did: stale water, fecal matter, and tangy rust.

+Four guards out front,+ Draus said, casting her ghost into his mind.

Their wards shone opaque and dull, shells rife with vulnerabilities. +Could crack them. Drop them. Even with what I have right now.+

+Leave 'em. Keep it quiet. They ain't bright, but even a complete fool can see when a mind's leakin'. We do this with minimal noise.+

With a wave, she sent her microdrone after them, the little machine sailing forth more needle than arrow. Yet, like a thread it greeted the guards, piecing four necks in quick succession. A stumble entered their gait, and then came the nauseous expressions. Groaning, the four stumbled aside, fleeing to their separate corners to empty their stomachs.

Avo frowned. +Hm. Still seems noisy to me.+

Draus shrugged. +They ain't dead. And they ain't gonna report the fact they got sick while on watch to their bosses. Be like it never happened. Now. Let's go find our victim and get this done.+

And, shrouded by their coats and unseen by the guards, two figures slithered into the gutter market to find their mark.