The production lines graciously welcome StaticDoc to its ranks. Here is to hoping they take at least a few days before needing their extremities replaced due to our vigorous scheduling.
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"Shit." Kimigawa cursed as she picked up one of the suitcases "This thing is heavier than I expected." She easily picked it up with her implants anyway but it still visibly unbalanced her.
The relatively small case was deceptively weighty.
Ignoring the urging of the complex's intruder alarm, I quickly scanned the room and made a decision "Give me a second."
The two of them frowned at the delay but still did as I asked as I began scrounging through the dead Militech soldiers, ripping their uniforms apart as quickly as I could and moving on to my allies before they could so much as protest.
Two precious minutes flashed by as I did my work and all three of us had the heavy boxes tied to our backs.
Sharpe gave me a crisp nod and turned to Kimigawa "Can you fight like that?"
The Asian woman's face twitched in annoyance as she moved her shoulders about experimentally but she forced it cool "I'll manage."
"Good." I cut in, even as I uploaded a ping onto the localnet "We need to get moving yesterday."
In silent agreement, I took point, Crusher in hand and grenades primed for use.
The moment we stepped out of the storage room, I immediately threw a frag down the hallway leading to the stairwell, the corpo squad rushing downstairs barely having the time to react before it detonated, blowing the legs off of one man and stunning the rest.
"Kimigawa." A single clipped word and she was already rushing the group to finish them off, spraying a salvo of smart SMG bullets that seemed to hone in on the soldiers' weak points as she moved into melee range.
But I couldn't admire her artistry with the monowire for more than a glance as Sharpe and I turned in the other direction, just as the nearby elevator opened up to reveal eight more heavily armored corpo grunts.
Eight corpo grunts currently stuffed like synth sardine in a can.
My crusher barked out its heavy shells, barely twitching in my hands and ragdolling the fuckers unlucky enough to be first in line and painting the pristine chrome walls of the lift red with blood and viscera.
Every single one of them had subdermals and body armor, but they'd need something much, much heavier to resist a modified shotgun firing armor-piercing rounds at close range.
One survived as my clip clicked empty but was quickly rewarded for his tenacity with a perfectly placed three shot burst to the eyes by Sharpe and his assault rifle, the old man aiming at the corpse for a second longer before moving on.
Behind us, Kimigawa finally finished her impromptu brawl with one burly unit of a corpo by shoving her SMG up his neck and unloading, effectively decapitating the man and painting herself red.
We wasted no time gawking, and quickly rushed up the stairs, not unaware of the squad of corpos above us currently fortifying the doors as their leader barked orders and tried his best to hide his stimulant enhanced panic.
Fuckers couldn't even give their NCOs the good shit...
'Not that it would have helped' I thought gleefully as I easily slipped my way back into the connection I maintained with the turret they were still oh so very certain was theirs.
Their field netrunner, just a man with a bunch of pre-installed quickhacks really, had just enough time to scream before his brain was overloaded, and the twin-linked heavy machinegun turret turned on the Militech grunts, sawing five of them in half before its slow turning speed allowed the officer who was standing back to disable it by unloading the entire magazine of his Mark IV AR.
Knowing the information was compromised, I immediately pushed my Cyberdeck harder, uploading new instructions to all of the rest of the turrets and turning the rest of the complex into an even bigger bloodbath.
But the rat seemed to have some backbone in him at least.
"The bogey netrunner has the turr-" Is as far as he got with shouting into his communicator before I blew his head open.
"Brave man." Sharpe frowned "He knew he wouldn't have the time to reload."
"Fool should have run." Kimigawa scoffed.
The old man did not stop moving behind me "Perhaps."
I felt the other staircase turrets above us suddenly stop belching their heavy munitions as their power was cut directly at the source, and immediately focused on what the corpos were doing.
"Into the hallway, now!" I barked as I peaked through an upstairs camera and saw what was definitely a demolitions team rushing towards the supporting pillar of the staircase one level above us.
But the rats were quick with their hands, and I was forced to yank Kimigawa by the scruff of her jacket as I blurred into the main space of Level 5.
Almost absently, i noticed Sharpe grunting in pain as his shoulder twitched with blood and static, but I was not given the time to scan him as the stairwell behind us detonated, burying our exit route completely and washing the whole area in concrete dust.
And things did not stop there, as the corpo grunts waiting inside Level 5 blindly unloaded on us, forcing Sharpe to roll to the side, and peppering me with stray shots here and there.
Time seemed to almost slow down as I analyzed the situation.
So far I had taken no damage, but I knew that their weapons were more than good enough to damage me if they got a lucky shot so staying still and engaging in a prolonged firefight would be idiotic at best.
Knowing that was the case, the only choice remaining was to flip the board whole.
I dropped Kimigawa, primed my Cyberlegs, and charged.
My Reinforced Joints launched me into a blur as I practically reappeared between the rattled corpo soldiers, the bark of my Crusher cutting them down before they even realized what was happening.
Close quarters did not give them the chance to focus their fire as I kept myself moving, and I emptied my entire magazine before grabbing my Copperhead and continuing to do the same, the incendiary rounds setting those unfortunate enough to survive me on fire from within as their screams filled the room.
All the while I kept my 'deck focused on my surroundings, and I ended my assault by emptying the last of my incendiaries into the chest of a particularly small grunt, all the while I pretended not to notice the grunt behind me getting off the ground, and what was left of the corpse of one of his comrades, and prime a grenade with terrified hatred in his eyes.
The gonk may have even succeeded had I not noticed him but just as he prepared to suicide rush me with what was a gen 2 Sandevistan at best, my hidden Mechadendrite lashed out with all the speed of a bullet, puncturing his throat and spine and dangling him up like some kind of macabre puppet.
The grenade detonated uselessly behind me, too far to do anything but scrape the paint off my coat. The sight of the now legless body dangling off of an inhuman limb though?
Now that did some real damage.
The few remaining highly trained, heavily equipped, and most likely minorly psychoindoctrinated foot soldiers saw what happened, and hesitated.
And in combat, hesitation was death.
A blink, and half of the remaining grunts were blown up by a PLS grenade launch, the others falling like weeds to disciplined AR fire as my allies rejoined the fight.
The final two rounded on the new arrivals in their panic and failed to notice me taking my stance again, an act that cost them their lives as I once more launched myself forward, my thermal blade slicing through the first completely and ending up stuck somewhere in the middle of the second.
The man stared at me through his visor with Optics filled with terror, before gurgling something and falling limp.
Still focusing on the battlefield, I redirected my scan to Sharpe and held back a relieved sigh as I noticed he was only minorly damaged.
"Surrender now you merc fucks!" A voice barked out from within the storage rooms "I have an entire swarm of Wasps with me and I am not afraid to use it!"
Utterly unsurprised, I couldn't help but quip 'Except if you were so confident you would have set them on us already.' to myself.
I will give the gonk credit where it was due, even while 'distracting' us he was trying and utterly failing to breach the chip on Kimigawa's neck, and wasn't stupid enough to try the same on an FBC.
"Stop bluffing kid." Sharpe seemed to share my thinking "How about you get out here and I shoot you just enough not to flatline you? Should let your bosses leave you with your brain if you are lucky."
"Ha!" The by now shivering netrunner barked out a 'confident' laugh "Did you not hear what I said? I will swarm you in fucking-"
That was as far as he got before his words were replaced with screams and repeated panicked shouts of "Nononono!" Before that too was gone and all that remained was blades on flesh and the crunching of bones.
Sharpe's face turned even paler than usual, his optics dilating slightly at he sound before he centered himself.
"The fuck?" Kimigawa hissed barely audibly.
Her answer came a moment later as a tiny ten-razor-limbed box of death and pain marched out of the storage room covered in the remains of the netrunner, quickly followed by another twenty of its kind.
Kimigawa quickly joined Sharpe in his paleness.
"They are mine now." I said "Let's move."
And while the two looked suitably impressed they were more than happy to let me take point again, and kept their distance from my horde of drones.
Luckily, even if unsurprisingly, the storage space that was the Militech complex was not built with only a single utility stairwell as its access point, and two more were left for us to use without taking the elevator into account.
Consulting Nix's schematics as I walked, I quickly decided on the best approach route and pivoted away from my initial path without saying a thing, the net was far more efficient to share plans as I uploaded the route directly into my allies' Agents.
Sharpe grunted in affirmative and our march turned into a jog and then a run as I herded the murder drones in front of me.
The death machines swarmed up the sides of the staircase before us, and I could almost see the Militech grunts above widening their eyes in realization before the screams began anew.
The three of us were not slow behind them, myself leading the charge again with my shotgun and gunning down those few grunts trying to save their comrades from a gruesome death.
It seemed I still had much to learn of just how low a corporate rat was willing to sink however, as I could just barely hear their NCO barking out orders from within, my Optics widening in half bafflement, half panic as I immediately pushed that information on to my allies.
The corpo officer, faced with an unwinnable situation, made the only correct decision he could.
Correct, yet utterly vile.
I had no time to think, only act, and I threw myself back with all the force my legs provided.
Just as the grenades started flying.
The corpos that were first in line were taken apart by a salvo of explosions, many of my drones following them in their flatline as the poor fuckers were not even given a moment to realize the sheer betrayal that had just happened.
I grunted as I pulled myself out of the indent I made in the concrete wall, and failed to keep the snarl from my face. We were enemies true, and none of us had our souls clear of filth, but there were still things that just weren't done.
And this was one of them.
Uncaring for the logistics of it, I connected to all of my drones and ordered them forward, making sure to input a command to really make the fucker regret his life choices.
There were no grunts to finish off as we got up to Level 4, only a pile of meat.
Sharpe gave the corpses, and more importantly the drones, a quick headcount before looking at me seriously "This won't work." He said "They are surely getting their heavy weapons ready upstairs and the drones won't cut it."
"Fucking backstabbing corpo rats!" I cursed "We can't just keep charging in and hoping for the best." Even now I could feel my nanites repairing the finger joints of my right hand, that explosion was anything but harmless.
"Then misdirect them, you gonk!" Kimigawa finally cut in "Throw the bots at the fuckers waiting for us upstairs and use the distraction to get up through the elevator!"
Sharpe and I paused, sharing a quick sideways glance ""Huh.""
"Huh." Kimigawa repeated irritably "Get to it already!"
Holding back a retort I did as she said and immediately began uploading daemons on the localnet again.
The ones I had spread out before were strong but even if not particularly competent, the dollar store netrunners that were present in nearly every Militech squad were numerous and were starting to wear them down.
If they got the chance to interfere with us directly this battle would turn much more difficult very quickly.
I ignored the light hissing in the back of my throat as the heat from my Cyberdeck began transferring.
Synchronically, what remained of my horde of drones began marching up the staircase, even if I was hesitant to part with all of them.
Keeping one for study would have been great but survival was what mattered now.
My scans would have to do.
Squashing my irritation, I forced the locks of the eleveator open just as the box finally descended, its movements masked completely by my thorough infestation of the localnet.
"Get in." I said and the two quickly followed, the doors shutting closed behind them as shitty elevator music started playing.
"Seriously?" Kimigawa deadpanned.
"Yeah. Seriously." I said dryly, noticing her hidden amusement, and Sharpe's not so hidden chuckle.
Most of my focus was currently stuck to the cameras spread about the complex though, giving me the perfect view of the corpos waiting for us getting rapidly butchered by my increasingly suicidal drones.
Their commander was not nearly as ruthless as the one who unwittingly stopped us from just cutting through the bulk of their forces, and for his lack of cruelty he was forced to watch as his troops were turned inside out by the skittering war crimes.
Not even their kills went unpunished as the little things would throw themselves on the closest enemy the moment they detected critical damage and detonate themselves in a considerable explosion.
They would all be dead soon, but the point was not in killing them.
Oh no, already the grunts above them were rushing downstairs as their commander finally got a report on 'rogue' Wasps and promptly decided containing them was a priority to exhausting a trio of mercs hiding behind the bots they could just swarm with soldiers later.
Or so I guessed was their thought process.
The most important part of the equation was the fact the already drained garrison of the complex was now fully rushing downstairs.
While the three of us were calmly ascending to the top, not an obstacle in sight.
I couldn't help but share the series of recordings with the others.
"Oh God." Kimigawa snorted before rising her nose unconsciously "See! I told you my plan was the best."
"Good on you, kid." Sharpe ruffled her hair, for which he nearly got shanked.
I almost allowed my self to relax, but quickly caught myself as I was reminded of what happened the last time I was overconfident, and so I focused back on the fight "The moment we get out you two rush to the sides. I'll get their attention."
Sharpe and Kimigawa quickly turned serious and nodded.
I was the current designated walking fortress, so in absentia of a declared leader the duo were more than happy to listen to my request.
Taking an unnecessary deep breath, I hefted my Crusher with my left hand and deactivated the magnetic lock of my sword with my right.
Seconds passed by as we reached the ground floor, but each felt like a minute as both nervousness and excitement built in my mind, and as my tension reached its highest, the doors of the elevator split open.
Presenting us with the mustering rush of what remained of the Militech garrison, formed up in ranks with the highest ranked officer present barking out her strategy for taking us down.
Her voice died in her throat as the elevator dinged.
"So." I voiced as I took a step forward, something in the air stopping the grunts from reacting instantly "How is that Trauma plan?"
An NCO was the quickest to react, rising his high caliber light machinegun with his considerable Cyberarms.
Three things happened at the same time.
Sharpe rolled to the side and took cover behind a stone-potted palm tree to my left, face set with calm calculation.
Kimigawa activated her camo and disappeared to my right.
And I finished lowering my Crusher, blowing the NCO's head off while roaring "Apparently it's great!" And overclocking the shit out of my Cyberdeck to deactivate as much cyberware as I could.
In a blink, the world turned to bullets and explosions.
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The forge demands additional input material. Failure to provide this will see to the rapid and irreversible optimization of the workforce.
And no, said optimization will not render you free of sentience, as that takes resources that we can direct elsewhere.
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