Here's the next part provided I haven't gotten something out of order again. I'll avoid flooding the list with multiple sections at once from now on and will be sending one in every couple days. Hope you enjoy.
The apartment was located in Block 33312 of the Glades area, a renovated section of downtown opened to the normal public for housing. It still bore the scars of gang fighting and I remembered seeing a recent series of Red BPNs for the area to deal with insurgents. A heavy brine scent hung in the air and I figured that the sewers had backed up again from Downtown's Section 4-80C reservoirs, something that happened a lot when I was a kid. That meant maintenance was on the way followed by a squad of new ops on a Blue sewer sweep. Poor bastards. There was no limit to the kinds of crap you could run into when that happened, no pun intended. As we walked away from the subway, my mood lightened and I took in the surroundings.
The cracked security walls of the tenements had been whitewashed so many times that they were now a wet dingy gray, but the taggers seemed to have prevailed. It looked like both SLA Maint and some kid with a lifetime supply of spray paint had been fighting over whose work was going to cover this wall. As usual, the kids had the perseverance to prevail. SLA departments, with the exception of Cloak, don't usually show a great deal of persistence when dealing with minor issues and move on after a couple fixes. That's probably why downtown is such a pigsty.
K'rth studied the markings as we walked along the walls and it's funny that even though he's spent half of his 72 years of life amongst humans, he still takes us too literally on occasions. There are still a lot of things he doesn't understand about humans and the differences can be embarrassing. The reverse is also true since every time I ask about Shaktar customs, his eyes light up and I'm sure he's laughing at me on the inside. Like a good friend, I take advantage of any opportunity to get a shot in even though there are always consequences.
"Why do they display their verbal arguments instead of voicing them in person?" he asked as he looked at some of the interlinked tag lines.
"It's a way of competing, trying to show up someone else in front of peers. What are you looking at?" I decided to stop and find what had caught his attention. I wasn't sure if he was baiting me or if it was a real question.
"It says-" he started, but the stylized script threw him a bit and he hesitated "Your mother downtown for five?"
I nodded and looked around, wiping the drizzle out of my eyes. There were a few people on the street, but no obvious threats. He cocked his head and squinted for a moment then continued.
"Why is 'downtown' considered an insult? Is five uni too little for someone to run an errand in their culture or do these people feel superior to those living further down?"
I shook my head and suppressed a smile. He wasn't kidding and if he didn’t trust me so much, he'd never risk embarrassing himself with ignorance. Besides if I took advantage of it, he'd get me back the next time we were around his Shaktar friends. M'th'l' s'lthk't – equal payback was always a possibility.
"The tagger is saying that someone's mother is a cheap whore who performs for almost nothing. In his opinion, the only thing worse than a whore is a cheap one."
He looked at me for a moment with a blank expression so I continued and kept a straight face.
"He's also saying that his rival's mother has bad breath, thanks to him. Doesn't like her dreadlocks either."
He looked like he had swallowed a sardine and his eyes narrowed as I started laughing. " M'th'l' s'lthk't" he snorted and started walking. Yeah I was in for it, but it was worth it.
I glanced at the BPN and noted the building and apartment number. When we ducked through a hole in the security wall, I realized that we were in for complications. We were looking for tenement #6, but someone had ripped the markers off the walls making navigation for outsiders even harder. We would have to talk to someone or else guess and both encouraged trouble.
There were nine two story tenements organized in three rows of three with an area that was probably intended as a courtyard between each pair. The ground was littered with paper and trash that was permanently attached to the ground. For the most part it was deserted and the only sound was that of garbage rattling in the wind or fighting rats. From the way the complex was organized, tenement #6 was in the middle section so we flipped a coin and took the one towards the south.
There was a cool, dank wind blowing between the structures and it carried the smell of something dead and rotting mixed with chemicals and brine. I winced because I didn't have a filter mask and started to breathe through my mouth instead. When I started to taste the air, I went back to breathing from my nose and decided to deal with it.
Most SLA tenements are prefabs that have virtually the same floor plan and characteristics, so if you've been in one you've seen them all. They have a stairwell at each end with doors and windows on only two sides, so approaching one undetected is normally pretty easy. That is if the residents haven't modified the layout, which these seemed to have done. Surrounding the blind sides of the building we chose were high stacks of old stoves, refrigerators, and busted washing machines. They were arranged to form corridors that were about six feet wide and could be easily defended. Every piece of open ground was covered with trash from food cartons and papers, effectively forming a rotting refuse pavement and sidewalk that could conceal traps. I had no doubt that something was going on here and that we chosen the right one. Normal civilians don't build fortifications.
I considered trying to get a Red BPN posted, but it would be too easy to get nailed for falsifying information. After all, how could I know that a soft company was operating here and why didn't I report it earlier if I did? I mentally told myself no. I was sure we could handle this ourselves. Besides, I didn't have a phone so I'd have to waste time hunting a chippy port or a pay booth and I really wanted to finish up and go home.
"What do you think?" I asked.
"It's trouble," he answered, "There are traps and sentries, but I don't see them yet."
"Then let's take this slow. I've got point."
With that, I quietly made my way down one of the paths while listening for movement and watching for any sign of traps. I expected tripwires, but since we were probably dealing with more than paranoid citizens, I would have to really keep my eyes open. When we found the first trap, I whistled under my breath.
It was a C-33 Boomer with a tight beamed sensor array, one of those cheap claymore types you find in the black market's bargain basement. From my understanding, they were designed for low intensity combat and general area denial, but didn't have enough "umph" to hurt anyone in real armor. To recoup expenses, a shitload of them got dumped onto the black market and ended up on Mort where they are used to chop the knees off innocents who accidentally stumble into Shatter labs. They aren't much good for anything else.
The tiny curved piece of metal was jammed inside a chopped section of plastic tubing and aimed to cover the width of the path at about ankle level. If the person who placed it had been any good we would have never seen it, but as it was they had placed it nearly in plain sight. There was no backup trap, but K'rth placed his hand on my shoulder and passed me. He had decided that he was going to take point as he quickly disabled it.
There were a couple of other simple traps, but we got by them without problems also. The first was a shallow pit trap with pun gee sticks caked with shit and covered by a piece of rotted drywall. The second was a DN favorite, a tripwire tied to a frag grenade in a tin can, but the twine was so frayed that it was easy to see. The sophistication of the defenses had dropped back to the Stone Age and made me think that we were dealing with someone without a lot of funding. Amateurs always put the most lethal traps on the outer perimeter and gradually work their way down to less lethal options on the inside. I have little respect for amateurs, but will happily take advantage of them.
K'rth has incredible senses, some of which I don't quite fathom and always seems to know when we're walking into an ambush. He calls it "D'nl'tst P'tr" which literally translates to "mind of sky" and appears to be some sort of enhanced perception. I asked him once if it was something like a 6th sense, but he just laughed at me and asked if that meant humans only had five. Sometimes it doesn't pay to ask questions.
K'rth crouched and held up his fist, signaling me to stop. I crouched behind him and he pointed two fingers to the right side and one to the left, indicating three targets and their positions. Without seeing what they were and considering the ordinance we had found already, I figured that we were justified in hitting them hard and fast. It's not like dead civilians are known to sue for damages.
I patted his shoulder and started around him to take point. Pulling the collapsible mirror out, I craned it around the corner and got a good look at the three. There were young men in neutral colors loitering around the door. I nodded to myself when I saw that each cradled a KACK-10. It's an ugly little soft company submachine gun marketed to kill operatives. I saw one of their pamphlets once and the slogan ran something like "20 dead SLOPs per clip- guaranteed!". Arrogant bastards, I say let 'em bring it on.
Putting the mirror away, I pulled my MAC in my left hand. K'rth nodded and flipped the power on his disk as he unsheathed it. In the misty rain, its edge was fuzzy and gray as it hummed. We had decided to do this as quietly as possible and that meant no firearms on either side.
I crept around the side of the stack of refrigerators in a crouch with K'rth on my heels then lunged forward. They didn't see me until I was on them and I slashed the one on the left under the chin with a backhand strike. Sidestepping a spray of blood as he gurgled and fell, I spun into the second target. He was in his late teens and scared out of his wits. Instead of trying to fire, he tried to scream and run so I kicked him in the stomach hard enough to pick him off the ground. He fell forward, bent in half and began to gasp and vomit. The third man stepped back and started to raise his SMG when I heard the hiss of K'rth's power disk. It sizzled through the rain, impacting the neck just above the collarbone with clunk. Sheering through, the body spun and flopped forward spraying me with a red gout. I doubt he ever knew what hit him.
I wiped the stinging rain out of my eyes with the back of my arm and stepped behind the gasping man. As I kicked his weapon free from his grasp, I locked my hands at the base of his skull and forehead. When I spun them apart, there was a crack and he fell forward into the muck and started twitching. I think he may have been trying to beg as I killed him and I pushed it out of my mind. Slayer has trained us well to kill, but we were on our own to deal with our consciences and sometimes as it is easy. I often tell myself that they were dead the moment they joined the other side and I have never lost sleep over it yet.
The whole event was over in a few seconds and went without a shot being fired. As K'rth slid his disk free of the wall, I flipped the blood from my MAC and began to gather the fallen weapons. As we piled the bodies around the side of the building, I decided we could document the kills later and get a soft company kill bonus because of the contraband. I took a minute to let the rain wash my hands and face clean, then turned to see K'rth waiting on me as usual.
There was work to do and we both wanted to get this over with as quickly as possible. Violence sometimes improves my mood, but killing questionable targets doesn't help. Trashing a few Interceptors would probably do the trick since there's no doubt what their intents are. They knew what they were in for when they signed on and it's my job to put them down. Very few things are so black and white.
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