Interlude – A Roaming Raccoon’s Reasonable Relationships [Part Five]

Interlude – A Roaming Raccoon’s Reasonable Relationships [Part Five]

Everything that could go wrong had gone wrong, and all at once too.

The info that Jerusalem had picked up pointed to part of the city that was way, way off on the edges.

It was still within the walls that they’d put up last week, but only barely. A fully-industrial sector that was impossible to fly over. There were literally thousands of smokestacks and chimneys all squeezed in together over large, brown and black buildings that were all function and no form.

Coco said that no one sane lived in this part of the city, and Rac believed her. She’d spent most of her life living in the undercity of New Montreal, where a lot of smaller factories and assembly plants were tucked away. She’d met some workers, usually maintenance people for the droids that worked the lines, so she picked a few things up, if only by osmosis.

The factories under the city didn’t make things from nothing. Instead, they received refined, already-processed materials, and turned those into stuff.

A factory making toys would receive blocks of plastic, metal ingots, and stacks of processed and recycled rubbers from elsewhere, then the factory would turn that into an end product.

Those materials came from here. The chemical heart of New Montreal.

The things brought into this part of the city were all precursor chemicals. Petrochems, monomers, polymers, plant extracts, unprocessed minerals and metal, heaps of auto-sorted recyclable goods. They were trucked in by the metric shitload then synthesised or broken apart, boxed, and shipped out to some other dreary, dank place.

The stolen gear was hiding in a warehouse, smack in the middle of the industrial sector.

As it turned out, the ‘ground’ level was actually about four levels off the actual ground. There wasn’t an undercity here. Everything was on solid Earth, but at the same time, the entire industrial landscape was above a thick multi-levelled platform, with interior roads, warehouses, factories, and plants all over. Only the plants that needed more vertical room poked out above the rest.

They’d started by looking at a few incomprehensible maps that Spider drew up. The underground here was a maze of passages and corridors and interconnected spaces. The 3D mapping software didn’t have the guts to lay it all out, but Rac got the broad strokes. She’d lived in a place just like this, it wasn’t so hard to orient herself.

The plan, once they’d figured out where to hit, was simple enough.

The goods would have to be moved eventually, and they happened to be in a large warehouse with only one exit. Attacking the warehouse was… not a good idea. There were PMCs hired to protect it. So, they’d hit whatever transport left the place.

That meant parking a floor below the target warehouse, then breaking into another warehouse a floor lower, cutting through the ceiling, and hoisting themselves up through the floor.

In the end, Rac, Garter, Spider and Coco were all hiding in the warehouse right across the road from the one with the prosthetics.

The plan was nice and simple, and of course, it went to shit within about two hours.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Garter swore under his breath. He’d stuck his head out from cover for just a split second and three rounds had zipped by.

Rac had just discovered, a few minutes prior, that when a bullet hissed, it was close, and when it made a snap, that meant she’d almost lost her head.

Garter leaned against their cover, which was a large cement barricade that was absorbing a fair bit of damage at the moment, and started to reload his gun. “We can’t stick around here,” he said.

“Can’t exactly leave, now can we?” Coco shot back. She was cradling her leg, which was pissing hydraulic fluid and a bit of blood all over.

She was grounded, just like the rest of them. The only one with a good idea of what was happening on the other side of the barrier was Spider, and he didn’t look ready to move either.

About two hours into their wait, six trucks had rocked up out of nowhere and mercs started rushing their target. The news, it seemed, had gotten out.

Garter had Spider open the door to their warehouse, which predictably had led to the mercs opening fire at Rac and her team.

Then the PMCs guarding the prosthetics joined in on the fun.

This wasn’t some low-budget rent-a-cop outfit. These were professionals. Of the ‘oh shit, oh fuck’ variety.

They’d opened up the large doors of the warehouse, revealing a few APCs with roof-mounted guns that had torn into the merc’s technicals.

The firefight was almost entirely one-sided. For about ten long minutes.

Then more mercenaries had shown up. These ones better equipped, with armoured vehicles of their own, deployable cover, remote-firing guns, and all sorts of gadgets.

The whole thing had devolved from there.

Now there was a three-way fight, sorta. Mercs were opening up on mercs, but mostly they were fighting the PMCs.

Spider: Fuck.

Rac blinked. That had been the first thing Jerusalem had said in a while. At first he was mostly keeping them appraised while they kept their heads down. The mission had gone tits up, and Rac for one wanted nothing more than to leave, but their path out was blocked. They had empty space to their left and right, and were across the street from the PMCs. Any fire shot at the mercs flew in their direction.

“What’s wrong?” Garter asked.

Spider: Mecha.

“What?”

There was a loud explosion, and Rac winced as a wash of hot air and dust burst past them.

She blinked, then did something she knew, consciously, was stupid. She glanced over the top of the barricade.

There were now three all-black mechanised tanks in the middle of the street. Big things, standing on four articulated legs that ended with threads like a tank’s. Their top halves were boxy and armoured, and covered in guns.

“Where the fuck did those come from?” Coco asked.

The mechs opened up on the mercs, answering that question.

The mercs returned fire with some haste, and the mecha flowed to one side, taking cover behind the burning wrecks of a few vans and an old six-wheeled APC.

“We are so fucking fucked,” Garter swore.

Rac didn’t like it. He was usually so cool and composed. Now it almost looked like he wanted to cry.

Spider: Dear Mom,
Spider: I know I wasn’t always the best son
Spider: But sometimes you were a shit mom
Spider: My will sends all of my money to Aunt Katia. I know you hate her.
Spider: Fuck you
Spider: PS: I’m dead.

“Is that your fucking obituary?!” Rac shouted.

Jerusalem raised his arms in a sort of ‘what do you expect me to do’ gesture.

Rac grit her teeth. She was dead. Was going to die. Caught in the crossfire of a street war she was totally unequipped for.

And here she’d thought she was hot shit with her cool bullet-proof skinsuit and bigass shotgun.

She didn’t need a shotgun, she needed… the kind of shit Samurai had. Which meant… she only really had one option if she wanted to survive this.

“Damnit,” Rac swore.

She dialled. Somehow, the call connected through what was probably six layers of ECM. “Yo?” It was Cat’s uncaring, casual voice on the line.

Rac still called out her name. “Cat?”

“Yes?”

“I, ah, might be in a bit of trouble.”

Spider: Got one!

“Got it how?” Garter asked.

One of the mecha stomped out of cover and turned, it’s side-mounted guns opened fire, spraying explosive rounds against the far wall of the street.

“Okay. How much is a bit?” Cat asked.

Rac shrugged back down into cover and tried to tune out the explosions, the swearing, and the renewed fire. She was pretty sure a new group of mercs had just arrived. Or PMC reinforcements. In either case, it just got worse. “Well, we’re pinned down right now. Spider hacked one of the bots, but it’s only distracting them. Coco’s shot, and Garter’s saying that we’re going to have to try and save our ammo. And I’m out of grenades.”

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“A bit. Where are you, exactly, and what the hell are you up to?” Cat asked.