Chapter Thirty-Two – Basse Couture

Chapter Thirty-Two – Basse Couture

“Car culture is strange.

They tend to be at least mildly competitive, which means that we occasionally get to observe two Samurai trying to one-up each other with increasingly wild rides. These cars don’t tend to stay cars for very long, not when walking mecha, flying tanks, literal airships and space-capable craft are some of the easier ways to escalate.”

–J. P. Kafka on the evolution of car culture, Jan 2038

***

I leaned back into the molded seat and tapped my fingers on the armrests as I thought. Fun and games aside, we were on a mission. We had to run over and save Katallina. It felt as if we were getting close. Deus Ex had dumped the mission on my lap that morning, and now we were nearing the afternoon. About noon now.

What was Katallina thinking? Stuck, captured, and no doubt far from comfortable for well over a day now. I’d be losing my mind in her place.

The problem was, Samurai needed points to solve all their ills, and she couldn’t have more than a few dozen from what I’d seen.

“You’re quiet,” Gomorrah said as she let go of the controls. “We’re cruising. I set us on a circular path until we figure out our next step.”

“Mmm,” I agreed. “That’s fine. I was just thinking. Myalis, can you gather up everything we’ve learned so far in like, a packet or something? Send it to Deus Ex and Longbow. The nerds too.”

“Nerds?” Gomorrah asked.

“Lag and Dial-Up,” I said. “They’re a pair of Samurai that basically live in the Mesh.”

“You know a lot of Samurai,” Gomorrah said.

“Just the five,” I said.

“That’s more than I know,” she said.

“I guess I get around,” I replied with a grin.

Gomorrah crossed her arms. “Disgusting,” she muttered.

Incoming call. One moment.

The car’s dashboard, already covered in displays and analogue switches and all sorts of buttons and screens, lit up as a hologram appeared standing above it. A foot-tall Deus-Ex wearing a frankly adorable pout as she sat on one of her huge floating guns. “Stray Cat, I saw your package.”

I stared. “You going to rephrase that?”

“What?” the girl asked. “No? I got the information packet your AI compiled. Just finished looking through it, in fact. Sunrise Weapons look like the likely culprit for the kidnapping. I set my AI to digging into them as soon as I got to that part and we’ve found some interesting stuff about them.”

“I sent that like, a minute ago,” I said.

She rolled her eyes. “You’re still thinking at meat-speed. You’ll catch up eventually.” A few screens flicked to life around her, most of them maps. “Pin-pointed a few likely spots of their corp to place the girl, so I sent a few drones out to scan the buildings.”

“Um… why didn’t you do that from the very start?” I asked.

“I only have so many drones, and their scanning process gives people cancer. Anyway, point is I found her here.” One of the maps grew bigger but I wasn’t paying attention to that.

“Wait, back the fuck up. Did you just give cancer to a few hundred people? What the fuck?”

“A higher chance to develop cancer. Probably lower than just breathing the air outside,” Deus Ex said. “I don’t actually have anything that can directly give people cancer. That would be a useless weapon.”

“That’s really fucked up, Little D, and I don’t think it would be anything approaching a useless weapon.”

“I have quantum-tunneling plasma guns that could fry people a lightyear away. I don’t need a cancer gun. And besides, those scans worked despite the shielding they have up.”

“Still fucky,” I said. “I know some of them are dicks, but others don’t deserve that kind of crap.”

“Fine, I’ll pay into their life insurance or whatever,” Deus Ex said. “They’re not important, the girl is.”

“You need therapy,” I said. “But that can wait until after we’ve saved the kid. And her dog. Do you have a plan or do we just barge in and take her back?”