Rotting plants, raw meat and cheap perfume all threaten to overload my preternatural flux enhanced senses with its corruption. Whatever I am chasing seems to be tapping into the raw emotions of everyone around it and releasing them back like a flood that rushes into a reservoir until it bursts the seams of the container. Downtown's denizens surf the amplified emotions that normally lie buried in the depths of their hearts and the worst part is they're turning on their master. Level 14 is burning with resentment for SLA, all throughout the sector TV transmitters are either down or broadcasting pirate messages. Anything with SLA on it is being shot at or trashed, unfortunately this also includes myself.
Gliding from rooftops and walkways has become too risky now, it seems that there is an awful lot of snipers around. Most of them are cross-eyed but I don't want to take a chance that one of them gets lucky. Street level isn't much friendlier but I have to keep up with the trail, if the enemy has a couple of Necanthropes it is important to find out where they're going and why. Things like this need to be nipped in the bud quickly lest they sow the seeds of dissent amongst others. I'm looking for a man, long brown hair with soft dark eyes aged about 25-30 years old. He could be any of several billion workers or unemployed dressed in gray trousers and a cheap plastic dark gray raincoat with a bluish shirt. Somebody, a nobody you wouldn't even look at twice on the street because he's just like everyone else, except he knows something that doesn't fit the usual reality we like to present in the world of progress. I just hope he isn't an 'anomaly', which could make my life difficult.
Finding 'Little Bob' is a stroke of luck in all this chaos, the well connected skin trader would know my man if anyone would. Following the wake of rioting civilians he is openly going about his business of capturing kids and teenagers with their tazers and tranq guns. Bereft of their parent's protection the kids are easy targets for squads of burly men rounding them up, normally they usually have to use more subtle methods but today is an exception. Bob waits by the big armored truck smoking a cigarette while the two props that I can see keep watch. Under his duster is a Darknight pistol, barely visible in the rolls of fat restrained by a dirty white singlet top, one of the props has DN0014 power armor and a 10mm rifle, his companion has ECM gear and a flickscythe. More than a match for the average shiver squad and most Operatives' they would appear to be a duo. The driver is a Frother of unusually large proportions, 7ft tall and 200kgs of steroid enhanced psychosis, he will be the first to die. No amount of combat drugs will save him now and I cant risk having the truck driving off.
From my perch on the crumbling balcony I ease the 17mm carbine up to my shoulder and manually chamber an armor piercing round into the chamber. While down below the Frother chambers his own mix into a hypo, the spoon glows an excited red through the thermographic sights, the unbaffled gun sounds like someone dropping a tank from ten stories up. The Frother spins twice off the truck door, painted dreads whirling and a fist sized hole through the right side of his muscular chest. The prop in the power armor is quick enough to spot the muzzle flash but not quick enough to spot the second and his head explodes like a dropped fruit. His partner is going for the 10mm rifle, he doesn't show up on the scope so I begin gliding in as silent as a bat, Bob the fat git is making for the backdoor of the truck. Mr ECM is quick, he must be on combat drugs but he's an awful shot and the 10mm rifle is unlikely to bother my own deathsuit armor anyway. He's given up plinking and switched to full auto just as we collide in a ball of feathers, sneaksuit and equipment in the ally's gloom. Now I know he's wired on chemicals, while he's vainly trying to punch my head off with a mutilator glove I've just torn out two ribs with my claws and he doesn't seem to care. I have to literally gut him before he even slows down, my ears are ringing from the gauntlets pounding but a good kick sends him flying into a dumpster still thrashing away. Pistol rounds start slamming into me even before I can get up, the asphalt is slick with grime, gore and blood making it even harder. Bob's a better shot than I originally gave him credit for but my deathsuit stops it all except for some nasty bruises.
Click, click, click, "fuck!" A thrown pistol knocks me forward again just as I've gotten to my feet and I'm face down in the muck. The dull clank of a door closing behind me indicates Bob has a siege mentality, "come out Bob! I need to have a chat with you!" Only two of his cronies have bothered to investigate the commotion, blasts from my gore cannon leave them bloody smears at the entrance to the ally. The rest do a runner, probably the only smart thing they've done all day, Mr ECM is still thrashing away in the dumpster probably wondering why his legs don't work.
"Get away from me you freak!" The door falls off after I blow the hinges with some shaped micro charges, he's been a busy man judging by the racks of kids hanging naked upside-down like some macabre mobile abattoir. At the end is the fat guy still trying to figure out if he can get away somehow "all I want is some information." He doesn't believe a word of it and weeps as I lift him up and hang him off the restraints, "no, second thoughts Bob, maybe I just want to hurt you for awhile". I barely have to touch him and he's already spitting out names of corrupt Shivers, Op's and the odd Darknight agent, double agent and a drug source. "I'm not internal affairs Bob", I have to be careful not to break him physically to much because I want to keep him talking. I tack up the picture of my target on the wall and Bob rolls his eyes.
"Oh look Bob! A box of 1500 hypodermic needles, going for the old fashioned look these days are we?" Bob's bulk isn't going to be hard to miss even for a D-grade darts player like myself.
"Goes by" thunk! "ooow!" thunk! "His name" thunk! "His name was..." thunk! "nnnng!"
thunk! thunk! "Phillip" thunk! "Phillip!" thunk! thunk! thunk! thunk!
"His name Bob! I want his name!" thunk!
thunk! "Stop it!" thunk! "C wuh chi Chu!" thunk! thunk! "c-c-Camer" thunk! thunk! thunk! "no! no! no!" thunk! "Cameron!" thunk! "PHILLIP CAMERON!".......thunk!It took 137 needles to get this far, only speeded up by the fact that I fitted Bob up with a few doses of stimulants that will stop him passing out even if I removed another few minor external organs. There's also a few other drugs in here that some people use as 'aphrodisiacs' so I give Bob some of them too just to amplify his sensitivity to greater levels. Some Op's spend money on truth serums and the like but I always preferred using what was at hand. The amount of young blood surrounding me is making me dizzy and weak at the knees, I don't think I will be able to contain myself before the cleanup and interrogation squads arrive. Just a little nibble, I'm sure Bob will be glad in any case to see me distracted.
I'm still the only link to the mysterious Mr Cameron so I had better get back onto the trail while its still fresh. Little Bob is getting a free ride back to HQ in his very own Kilcopter undoubtedly to meet some of my other compatriots who will glean everything out of him, which is a pity because I was beginning to really enjoy myself. Some poor Op's squad gets to clean up my mess and I'm on my way trying to close that gap, still wondering if Phillip Cameron is part of Darknight or just someone who likes their pistols and has hooked up with them. My hunch still lies with heavy Darknight involvement though, so far they seemed to have followed all the standard tactics of causing disruption to hide something else.
Station Analysis has picked him them up a few times along with 3 others that remain unidentified as well, they're heading down. Towards the lower regions of Mort, the lawless sprawls and cannibal sectors, from here on in I will be on my own. Backup would be at best hours away, down past level 17 there are people who have never heard of SLA and muchless sunlight. My quarry has a vehicle of some sort that is enabling them to keep up a fast pace, but not fast enough. I tear through past ancient walkways and tenement blocks devoid of life. What residents there are down here are miserable creatures, gaunt, bulging eyes and wracked by diseases like scurvy. They huddle around in family groups for protection and against the bitter cold down here, light comes from the occasional streetlamp and there are still thousands of TV's that still work. It gives the whole region an eerie murmuring with only a gunshot or occasional scream to disturb the silence. I must have passed level 20 by now, a trail of locator beacons behind me are 'chirping' to those who follow. A small fleet of Stigmatyr gunships full of deathsquads and Sepulcher, they're slowed down by unfamiliar terrain and the buildings are quite close together so the choppers have to find ways in. Already they've lost one gunship after it collided with a dead end, Sepulcher wasn't on it but they aren't going nearly as fast now. Every now and then she gives me an update with ebb telepathy, it's been 16 hours now and I'm bone tired.
The 'chirper' is a small black cube not much bigger than a matchbox with a 60cm piece of wire sticking out of it, I put it under a loose piece of brickwork on a long abandoned balcony where nobody could find it. It's 1200 hour battery is the only way I will ever be able to find my way out of the maze and for SLA to find me. Rain down here is but a mist of greasy black droplets full of all kinds of nasty chemicals, fog rolls up the canyons of tenement blocks all of which are indistinguishable from their neighbors. You have to be careful where you tread down here, strong looking floors can actually be rotten with mildew and dry rot and concrete may as well be chalk. I'm burning flux just to flush away the exhaustion but I still have to get out of here yet but the burn gems ran out ages ago. Now it's just me, the gorecannon and the deathsuit that will determine my survival over the next few hours.
There was only a hum and then my right shoulder exploded in a shower of blood, it was when I was falling that I actually heard the gunshot ring out. Another balcony gives way as I windmill down snapping bones that even my deathsuit can't protect me from. Hitting street level is almost a relief except that a large chunk of a second story balcony that follows.
"Dunno, looked like some kinda big fucken bird so I plugged it, can't see shit in this fog, screws with the IR and Thermo." Footsteps are getting closer and then further away, someone's looking to confirm a kill and they're just as lost as I am."Ok squad, split up into 5 pairs of two and start looking for Ander's bird. Corporal, get on the horn and let LZ know we've got some kind of contact." They're further away than I thought so I take to chance to knit myself back together while there is still time, it think I managed to break both arms and it really hurts.
"Will do Sarge, LZ this is Alpha6 we have a possible downed contact of some sort. Might be some kind of mutant animal but we're checking anyway, over." It takes some time for the reply to get back to the soldier, I can hear the encryption whine through the speakers synthetically distorting the voice beyond recognition. "Acknowledged Alpha6, you are sitrep confirmed at lot5 by 6 on the automapper, over."
I still don't know if they're Darknight, Thresher, SLA or even a war criminal squad but in any case I'm not happy about them shooting me. Once everything's back where it should be thanks to the ebb medkit I fold out from under the pile of debris to a ledge that's only 10 metres away. I restrain myself from hunting the squad like the vermin they are, the little mongrel with his Sergeant and sniper rifle have found my landing spot. My own weapons managed to survive better than I did in the fall which is a relief, the gorecannon looks a tad second hand compliments of a 15.3mm sniper rifle. "Ah, stuff it Anders, probably under all that shit and we've got to get back to the foldship", luckily they don't see a magazine of pistol ammunition that fell off down there.
Foldships, squads of the 17th Darknight Reavers, 3 or so rouge Necanthropes are beginning to make this job look bleak. The Reavers in particular are probably one of the best divisions of troops Darknight have, a clan of Frothers that defected over about 60 years ago to the enemy. Armed with the best Darknight can provide them with, they are rarely seen outside war zones but they carve their way through our Militias with ease carrying their power-cutlasses and their own brute strength. I slip in behind the to follow them back to their base, luckily visibility isn't good but I do have to be quiet. The buildings shudder with every footstep, fortunately my dainty form makes a lot less noise than 10 powerarmored goons do in full battledress. Said goons are probably more than enough to pluck stuff and eat me, so much for optimism.
How Darknight managed to get a frigate on the surface of Mort is just another mystery to find out later. The 120metre vessel isn't big for a foldship but the vacant block it uses as a base looks well used, a testimony to SLA's much vaunted planetary defense system, which would appear to consist of kids with slingshots and harsh language. Unless they have some kind of cloaking system, I'd jot that down in my computer for later reference except falling five stories isn't in its warranty. The soldiers are busy offloading equipment from the slender black vessel, it's a lovely design with swept organic lines that mark her as an old ship. Foldships are like Deathsuits in many regards except bigger, the sciencefriction material protects everything inside and channels flux. Sometimes when they get really old they become sentient as well, right now my job has changed and I have to try and stop it leaving before help arrives in two hours. My only real hope is to try and kill the navigator, who with any luck won't have anyone else onboard who can pilot her.
The AV car my quarry used to get down here is parked onboard in the ships capacious hold, it presents two opportunities. A place to hide and a fast get away if things go badly, which they always seem to do. Like a foldship I can also fold space around me and move instantaneously from one place to another. My skill at folding doesn't have the range that a fully trained navigator has but it will get me the 500metres into the backseat of that car.
Using the scope on my rifle I can get a clear line of sight, its times like these that my wings are a hindrance but I can just fit. Mathematical formulations and mental concentration are in turn triggering capacities within the deathsuit and my body, flux flows through like a sexual release that makes me hold my breath. The next thing I know I'm in the car, with a mostly human and frother crew, their security involves sentries that don't think about this type of thing. Inside it stinks of that blunt smell again and a hint of dead flesh that I've become to associate with Cameron and his friends, I am getting a clearer idea of what I am up against now. Memories from long ago remind me of this smell and it can only mean danger, more than what the bullets of the soldiers will do or anything else they have.
There's a gathering outside, a handful of trucks has turned up and that's gotten them all excited, Cameron and his three friends have appeared. Big nine foot tall bruisers with black skin that shines like oil, white matted hair and eyes so red they glow with hatred of all living things. Once they might have been ebons or humans, it's hard to tell what species the union was formed with but I have a fair guess at what controls them. The other soldiers keep well clear of Cameron and his giants, their visitors are hesitant to approach as well. Street riff raff and fixers outlawed from normal society have all turned up here for whatever's in the cargo containers, I notice they bring their own things to barter with as well, everything from SLA equipment and guns to children. While this deal is going down I feel it's a good time to leave, stuck in a cramped space without any air only compounds this even more. Rather than risk opening a door and setting off any alarms the vehicle might have I fold into a nearby hall way that leads off the cargo area. Gorecannon primed with flux and a rifle in hand I run through the organic corridors that resemble the internal workings of some great beast, there is so much flux running through the walls its distracting to the point of arousal. Humans, Frothers and other species get off on drugs, ebons, brainwasters and necanthropes burn flux to get the same effect.
I make my way up through the mostly empty ship, they house the troops mainly in more 'normal' quarters up the front. Sciencefriction constructs tend to worry non-ebb users, I'm not concentrating when I slam into an ebon that's ambling around the corner. My gorecannon instinctively fires a poisonous quill into his left eye before he even gets a chance to scream for help. The venom gets pumped straight into his brain, paralysis of most major muscle groups sets in immediately. The ebon looks only to be about 20 but Darknight seem to think he's skilled enough to have a precious deathsuit. Almost immediately my gorecannon begins draining flux and blood out, the pretty blue eyes begin to fade, unlike waster's eyes with their charred lids. He's dead within a minute, drained of life as well as the precious flux, somehow I don't think he was the navigator otherwise he may have tried to fold out of here. The corpse gets shoved into a nearby alcove and I begin a more sedate prowl through the ship.
Three decks up I run into trouble, a build up of flux alerts me to impending danger ahead, a blast from a flintlock singes a few feathers as two ebons up the hallway open fire. Hit the deck, rolling sideways to the left a second blast impacts closely, come up firing the carbine. The ebons get blown to pieces by the heavy rounds, the skulking has come to an end and another figure darts nimbly into the doorway at the end. No time to think I charge the gorecannon and head up there running just as the portal closes. It's made of sciencefriction material, bulletproof mostly but a few blasts from the gorecannon has it in tatters. Pistol fire from within tears the rest down as I charge into what appears to be the navigator's chambers, he's a necanthrope with skin that looks charred and an oversize jaw full of long canines. 12.7mm HESH rounds from his revolver take big chunks out the wall and will do the same to me if I'm not careful.
"Better save that last one for yourself traitor!" Nothing worse than a renegade necanthrope and they hate being reminded of it, instead of shooting me or himself he jumps the control panel. Possessed of uncanny strength he hurls me up against the glass portals of the chamber, just to top it all off he shoots me anyway in the stomach.
"Pretty little bitch aren't you? I'm sure we'll find a use for you once you're drained of flux", with the pain I can't find a good comeback right now so while he's reloading the hand cannon I blow his right arm off at the elbow with my pistol. Momentarily confused at my speed he's left holding the 6th bullet while I dump the rest of the magazine into his head and torso turning him into a boneless wreck.
While I'm healing myself today for the second time I manage to find the channeling crystal underneath the navigator's chair, it takes all my strength to pry it free. A blue flawless gem that weighs almost 5 kilograms even though it's only as long as my hand, without it this ship is going nowhere. Even if I wanted to I doubt I could break it so I pull back my deathsuit and slide it gently between my breasts, the next step is to interdermalise the suit which is an easier process than it sounds. Now the crystal is lying above my heart like a cold stone, it is uncomfortable at first but I begin to get more comfortable with the ancient gem's presence. There isn't much I can do about my bedraggled corset and skirt, not that anyone cares much down here about modesty or fashion anyway. Long ago when I was still a woman the ability to pass myself off as a civilian was easy with the ability to interdermalise my armor. A ganger could literally break a baseball bat over my head and I wouldn't even flinch, but those days are long gone.
The powerarmored goons I saw earlier are beginning to block off my exit, I throw the broken corpse of the navigator out into the hallway to see if they're paying attention, it disintegrates in a brief display of marksmanship almost immediately. In response to this I throw a few hand grenades down there to let them know how much I'm not enjoying this. They work wonders in confined spaces allowing me to start firing on the retreating troopers, a few try to save their downed companions screaming on the floor. I rattle off some more 17mm, blowing limbs off and turning the hallway into a charnel house while the gorecannon vomits out raw flux that even their armor cant protect them from. Frothers are just big drug addict humans but they are insanely loyal to their clanmates so even though they know they're going to die they still try to rescue the survivors, which is unfortunate for them but endlessly amusing for me.
When the last scream dies down I can here more voices and the tinkling of the ceramic barrel on the carbine, they don't seem to be as keen now that I've killed over a dozen of them. A sniper pops his head around the corner in the gloom trying not to get noticed, "not again!" The 17mm round goes through the corner, his armor, him and out the other side to hit someone else who begins swearing and screaming. As amusing as all this seems to my twisted mind I will probably run out of ammo before they run out of grunts, plus the 'heavy artillery' has arrived. I know their smell all to well even over the stench of accelerant and blood.
"It doesn't have to end this way lady Parody", three voices call out simultaneously while automatic weapons fire from a squad machine gun has made me keep my head down. "So tell me filth! How does the story end?" I can feel some unearthly discharge roll down the hall towards me and then the blast hits. "Badly", I mutter getting to my feet again slightly battered but intact and then another blast knocks me over the control panels. The concussion waves knock the air out of my lungs and there are a few more singed feathers. Volleys of three at a time begin pounding into the wall of the chamber along with quite a few bullets, seconds later parts of my outer cover are beginning to come apart. In revenge I fire off five rounds blindly through the wall and am rewarded with a scream. The pounding stops briefly to allow a rush of soldiers up the hallway, I kind of expected this to happen sooner or later so I'm up dumping goreblasts and begin shooting into them. One nearly takes my head off with a spray of autofire forcing me down, I fire a goreblast through the panel turning his legs into jelly. While he's down screaming his lungs out I snap off a shot down the hallway, one of the trio has his head explode messily showering his companions. "Good, bullets do kill them!" The bolt closes on an empty chamber, I'm out of rifle ammunition. Down there they sound really, really pissed off, the front portals are cracked badly from their assault, its time for Lady Parody to exit stage right.