Chapter 44: The Secret in the Fridge
"Fuck, fuck, FUCK!"
First, Rhys sliced clean through the front half of the pickup truck with his katana. Then, his left fist smashed into the driver's face, pulverizing bone. Simultaneously, his right hand, gripping the katana in a reverse thrust, punched through the passenger's chest. A devastating cross-body combo that zeroed both hostiles instantly.
Then he heard Pilar's desperate screams. The techie had braked to avoid the flanking vehicles, but another pickup had slammed into his rear, sending him spinning off the highway into a ditch. Rhys saw him crawling out of the wreck, face covered in blood, sunglasses gone.
WHOOSH—
Even at over a hundred kilometers per hour, the wind seemed to lag behind Maine's car as Dorio wrestled with the wheel. Maine himself was leaning halfway out the window, his new, high-end arm cannon deployed—split open, glowing, and firing.
BOOM!
A massive explosion engulfed another pickup truck, blowing it sky-high in a fireball nearly half a meter wide.
"Grenade!" Jackie yelled suddenly. The remaining pickup wasn't just spraying bullets; they'd lobbed an explosive.
Jackie instantly drew his pistol, his eyes narrowed in concentration. Oh yeah, forgot to mention, he's a fucking deadeye.
This range...
BANG—
His golden La Chingona Dorada barked, spitting fire. The grenade detonated harmlessly three meters from their car, the shockwave and dust cloud momentarily blinding Rhys.
Jackie let out a triumphant whoop. "Fuck yeah! I'm the best!"
Inside Jackie's car, Lucy watched the unfolding chaos, utterly stunned. Less than two minutes had passed. Four heavily armed vehicles launching a coordinated ambush... and they were almost completely wiped out?
"Surprised?"
Kiwi's voice startled her. Lucy turned and saw the other netrunner watching her.
"This..." Lucy trailed off, speechless. She'd initially dismissed them as a B-list crew, maybe competent but ultimately unprofessional. Now? She realized how wrong she was. Even Rebecca, the girl she'd dismissed as a kid, had charged headfirst into the firefight, dual-wielding pistols like a tiny whirlwind. Was she not afraid of dying?
"I felt the same way at first," Kiwi said, reloading her own pistol. "Thought, what is this gonk crew? But now... I think being here is actually pretty preem."
"Though we still look completely unprofessional," she added, leaning out the window and calmly lining up a shot on a figure crawling out from under one of the wrecked pickups.
BANG—
Aided by her smart pistol's targeting system, the shot found its mark. The figure under the truck twitched once, then went still.
"Get that jinx out from under his car!" Kiwi yelled, racking the slide. "Rebecca! You and Pilar get in Maine's ride! We need to get the hell out of here! More of these bastards are coming!"
"Fuck! What about the cargo?!" Pilar yelled, gritting his teeth as Dorio pulled up beside the ditch, using her car as cover while hauling him out from under the wreck and into her vehicle.
"Forget the fucking cargo!" Maine roared back. "Fuck the cargo! With this much noise, there'll be dozens more Wraiths crawling out of the woodwork! If they all have heavy weapons like this, we'll be flatlined out here in the open!"
Maine knew his crew was good. Damn good. With Sasha back, plus Lucy now, they probably had one of the best netrunner teams in the merc biz. Most top-tier deckheads were locked down by the corps. And Rhys? The kid was a freak. Jumped from fourteen stories, took on gunners with a blade, moved like he had a Sandevistan without the chrome. Jackie was preem too—deadly shot, balls of steel, sharp combat instincts. Once he got some proper chrome, he'd be a monster.
Taking everything into account, Maine figured his crew already had the potential to be A-listers. Top-tier.
But even a top-tier crew facing dozens of hostiles with heavy weapons in open terrain? That was just suicide. Rhys might be fast enough to dodge bullets, but could he dodge grenades? Saturation fire? Hell no.
"Drive! Get us out of here!" Maine ordered.
The two remaining cars sped down the highway side-by-side. Midway, Kiwi spoke up again. "We can't head back to Night City. This was clearly an ambush. They'll be waiting. We need to go somewhere else!"
"Where?" Maine demanded.
"How the fuck should I know?!" Kiwi shrieked back.
"This way—" Lucy suddenly interjected. "Go this way!" She hadn't just been watching; she'd jacked into one of the downed Wraith's neural interfaces and pulled some useful intel.
Yes... it was definitely an ambush. Not the fixer's doing, not Babs' fault. The Wraiths had captured the previous crew Babs sent out and tortured the intel out of them. They'd been lying in wait.
"Shit!"
Maine cursed, wrenching the wheel. The car veered off the highway, heading south into the desert wastes, away from Night City. Jackie followed suit, his car groaning in protest. He winced. He'd borrowed this ride, and after that collision, the front bumper was gone. His choom was gonna kill him.
Several tense minutes later, they pulled up to an abandoned gas station. They got out, needing a moment to regroup and contact Rogue.
"Think we lost them?" Dorio asked, scanning the horizon.
"Either that, or they weren't really chasing us," Pilar said, patching up a cut on his forehead.
"They seemed more interested in the cargo," Kiwi observed. "They stopped pursuing once we ditched the containers."
Hearing Kiwi, Rhys looked up at the remaining "ice coffin" still strapped to the roof of Jackie's battered car. He hesitated for a few seconds, took a deep breath, and climbed onto the roof.
"Rhys? What are you doing?" Maine asked.
Rhys ripped the ropes off and placed both hands on the lid of the container. "I don't believe the Wraiths would go to this much trouble just for a fridge full of vegetables," he said to Maine.
Maine's eyes flickered, then he fell silent, watching Rhys intently. Vegetables... a luxury in Night City, sure. But out here? The Aldecaldos grew them. For Nomads in the Badlands, vegetables were just food. For the Wraiths, maybe they were valuable trade goods for the city market, but worth this kind of firefight? Enough firepower to assault an Aldecaldo camp? If they wanted produce that badly, why not hit the source directly? They'd snatched Saul, Panam's clan leader, before. The Wraiths were dangerous psychos, but they weren't stupid.
And why would they break off the chase after losing a dozen members, just because of some vegetables?
Thinking it through, Rhys threw open the container lid.
Inside, it was packed tight with leafy greens. He reached in, digging deep, tossing handfuls of vegetables out onto the roof.
Then his hand hit something hard. He pulled it out.
"Vegetables, my ass!"
Staring at the object in his hand, Rhys couldn't help but laugh bitterly, finally letting out the curse that had been building inside him.