16-10 Armor (II) (Patreon)

+Listen–look, fuggin’, just, like, listen, consang–

I think we should stay off the streets for a bit, y’know?

Just buy a month’s worth of kovoli rolls and hole. Hole deep and dark for a bit somewhere safe. Or jock ourselves a ride outta this district.

Yeah, I know–I know we don’t got much imps left but… Racker, brother, fuckers be dying out there. Like, getting snuffed left and right. You know how the Three-Fingers were supposed to be the next big thing, right? I told you no one cuts a ‘carity like them? Well. They’s done already. Broken. Someone tore through them in like a day–a war echoing out from the Bazaar is like, fucking… whoever went after them’s still gunning for what’s left.

Couple hours back, one of the guys I used to run with got snuffed while I was synced to him. Used to do some basic snuff-work for the Hundred-Eights and he just dropped like a vegetable when I was trying to bum a new middler to get jobs from since Hannel got Big Empty’d by that Reg sow.

Outta nowhere. Didn’t even see the shot coming. I think it might be Dread Draus cleaning up some more.

Yeah. I know. Fuck that run. Should’ve known better than to gun for a Reg–stupid, stupid shit.

Point is, Squires be dying left and right and up and down, and there’s something that smells real bad in the air. I think we should just go cold for a bit. Wait for things to even out again, y’know.

Warrens are getting real hot these days. Too hot. Someone’s out to cull the Syndicates, and last time that happened, them Guilder fucks started throwing their pocket ‘shine around.

Ain’t wanna be around when that happens.

-Thoughtcasts between two Street Squires

16-9

Armor (II)

The minds of most independent gangers were infused with a delightful taste of precarity. So close to the edge in their lives and habits, their lives ran the borderlands between predator and prey, exploiting the vulnerable and hiding from Syndicates, for it was the former that kept them fed, and the latter whose territory they trespassed.

As such, with veins thickened by the viscosity of joy and nerves tight from the constancy of tension, when death emerged from the spot where it lurked, the final notes passed from their ghosts were not of surprise or terror, but an exhale of relief and release.

For all the city’s faults, New Vultun was a buffet that offered so many unique emotions–frames of thought–that could never be found anywhere else, from anyone else.

Some prey just tasted sublime.

“Poor shits,” Chambers said, shaking his head as the air crackled and Draus’ new favorite gun sang its rising whine. Muffled cries and wild gauss fire followed, but the sound of a ringing crackle cast everything back into silence thereafter. Dust rained down from the paint-flecked ceiling as Avo watched seven more accretions wink out on the floor above. Several more targets were moving, desperately fleeing for the windows or stairs, their blood and breaths brushing his Frame with each pulse of their straining hearts.

A few of them would reach the edge of the block soon. But it didn’t matter. Not with the Manta layering itself across the windows, coating the exits of the structure itself and catching any stray shot from bursting past the walls and becoming some FATELESS’ misfortune.

Sync Chain (ACTIVE): [Draus-001] -> [Avo-001] -> [Chambers-001] -> [Kusanade-001]

Bringing up Draus’ visual display, Avo watched as the Regular unlatched a new gun from her armor, the flowing smart-matter receding as she took hold of the weapon. Multiple indicators and icons littered her visual display, highlighting the estimated positions of her enemies and tracking them via a variety of sensor-enhancement functions.

As her Meldskin flowed into the gun and interfaced with it, a new interface appeared indicating the ammunition, effective range, temperature, gravitation curvature, and a myriad of other trajector-based calculations worked in tandem with her armor to ensure unfailing accuracy.

Three desperate gangers hid around the corner, waiting to ambush her. The outlines of their bodies had two clad in retrofitted industrial rigs with fusion cutters at the ready. The last of the three had her lower body replaced by a spider-like No-Dragon bioform, with each leg digging into the worn tissue of of the rotting walls to better brace the alloy cannon she was sporting.

Lehnsherr X-1 “Polarizer” GravMag Linear Rifle

Ammo: 1KG / 1KG

Charge: 100%

->Recommend expending 0.2% of capacity for current targets (soft)

Accuracy Estimation: 100%

The Polarizer was five feet in length and two wide. Ferromagnetic fluid filled the transparent cartridges slotted toward the back end of the weapon. Fused with the Meldskin, there was little chance for Draus to drop the gun, and with the additional circuits being quick-fabbed through the smart matter, the issue of running dry on power would be a distant one indeed. Additional details about the tool were loaded through their shared Neurodeck connection, but its functionality was simple enough to understand.

Draus clenched her fist, and the “trigger” was pulled. Flaps lifted along the square-barreled gun and electricity danced from each protrusion as a single globule was pulled free from the ferrofluid cartridge. A speck of mercury darted out with a low hum of the gun, the initial shot a subsonic projectile, visible even without a reflex booster.

It was only when it reached the corner where the ambushers awaited that the full functionality of the gun declared itself with a crackle. Lightning leaped out from the extended pylons, whipping into ferrofluid as Avo felt his Woundshaper shiver. Suddenly, the currents flicked right and the projectile twisted ninety degrees.

Broken glass, screaming metal, rising dust, and spraying gore erupted out from the hall as the Polarizer hyper-accelerated projectile far beyond the confines of its barrel.

Three more accretions vanished from Avo’s cog-feed as he listened to the guttural guffaws working their way out from Draus, wondering if any of his kind would have been left should Voidwatch have blessed the Regulars with such technology.

{You know the best thing about a gun like the Polarizer is that it’s flexible and economical. As long as the projectile is still in range of the gun’s gravmag field, it can prime any ferromagnetic substance with a charge and “lasso” ferrofluids back into its cartridges. Energy is a bigger concern than material ammunition, frankly.} Calvino paused. {It’s also why all your weapons are coded to interface with your Meldskins or Neurodecks. We don’t need any of the Guilds capturing one of these and deciding to make a Heaven of electro-magnetism without our explicit oversight. One mistake was enough.}

Over their shared ansible link, Draus’ laughter continued to grow as she gunned the trigger again and again. Avo’s Phys-Sim began painting turning impact trajectories as more shots tore through crumbling walls, twisting, turning, and splashing back into one another as they cut down more helpless gangers.

“Poor fuckers,” Chambers said reiterated.

Grunting, Avo found himself in agreement with ex-enforcer. Distant memories of fusion burners and gauss cannons cutting his brothers down harkened back to him. The Regulars didn’t need voider tech to break his like. If it was overkill for a ganger, it would have been beyond that for a ghoul.

{Killin’ their like’s gettin’ to be a bab habit,} Draus sent, her deck uploading another snapshot of her ego via the ansible. Compared to communicating directly through thoughtcasts, ansible didn’t create a metaphysical “pairing” between minds, but rather a constant feed of copied data and was drawn and fed back into mental endpoints.

The fact he was sending out duplicated coldtech data rather than his literal thoughtwaves was probably why his Conflagration hadn’t ignited the minds of his cadre. Another thing he needed to study, if only for the new protections they might afford.

Perhaps he might have more than one means to avoid a disruption after all.

Putting such considerations for later, he liquefied the path ahead of him away and stepped into a neon-bathed room drowned in low, droning music. The walls and doors ahead of him were once of reinforced steel–a showcase of ganger ingenuity as they layered the soft walls of a commercial block with armored bulkheads and ship parts procured from Mawdivers.

This was what he came for: an organ farm with a stolen gene-vat serving as its heart, and the source of the ganger’s operations.

Gaming the nature of implant scarcity was one of the few, true ways to get rich quick in the Warrens, so if, say, a group of bold and suicidal junkies managed to pull of a miracle raid on crumbling Syndicate for a machine capable of printing cheap organ replacements alongside a variety of bioware augs at almost no overhead, they might just find themselves in place to be the next big fish in a very small pond.

Or attract the attention of a reasonably keen Necrojack and get themselves raided in return.

Entering a living remodified to be an antechamber, Avo cast his Skimmer out again in case there were any unexpected surprises. An Incog would be an absurd phantasmic for a ganger to have, but the same could be said about a ghoul with a Liminal Frame.

Let alone one that’s also currently sporting high-end voidtech.

As waves of perception rippled out from his mind and painted the local environment into his awareness, he ensured none of the mem-data hid any indications of a possible ward-clash and continued.

Over thirteen surviving gangers positioned themselves on the floor above. Considering the circular hole smashed through the floorboard and the half-installed railings, they were likely planning to remodel this place into a long-term base of some sort. Colors of dark lilac and floral scents filled the air, but between each sniff, Avo caught a whiff of something fetid; the smell of infected wounds and unclean bodies.

Fire flared next to him as the air around Chambers came alight. The cheap paint began to simmer and burn as the half-strand called upon his Heaven, using the heat in the air as a catalyst to form the shape of his insectoid swarms.

Warning: Temperature spike detected

“Wait,” Avo said. “Should test armor integrity. We should get shot a few times first before killing them. See how armor holds in practical circumstances.”

Chambers paused, a single wing sown into being from the flames around him. “Yeah… that’s a good idea. We should totally get shot.”

A low breath of dismay came from Kae, her presence lagging slightly behind them. “Can’t we just test that on our own? In safer conditions? A stable environment is probably much more conducive to–”

“Come on, Kae,” Chambers interrupted, throwing up his hands as spun on his heels, speaking to her while backpedaling to the open space below the gangers. “It’s just a bunch of joy-fiends with half-working gaussers. What’s the worst that happens? We get killed?”

“Well… getting shot hurts,” Kae replied weakly.

The ghoul and the half-strand shot a look at the Agnos and shared a look thereafter. Even through the featureless visor Chambers was sporting, Avo could feel the grin growing on the man’s face as he struggled to contain his laughter.

To Avo’s own demerit, he was hissing with amusement as well.

“It’s… getting shot hurts,” Chambers snorted.

A wheezing hiss escaped from Avo as the triviality of the Agnos’ concern grew into inexplicable comedy to him.

Kae folded her arms, and he got the distinct impression she was glaring at the both of them. “It does.”

More pig noises came from Chambers as his nose failed to breathe right. “I-it does, she said. This girl blew her own brains and is scared of the fucking owies. Wasn’t your on fire for like, years or some shit?”

The impression that Kae was glaring became a near certainty by this point. “Yeah. It hurt. A lot. And it never got better. Not even forgetting about it helped.”

Chambers, ever the social-jackal, killed his final chortle with a cough. “Ah. Sorry. But hey, this won’t be near half-bad. And you’ll be able to snuff these half-strands when you’re done. Just pretend that they’re the Silvers or something.”

The Agnos wordlessly look up, and titled her head. “Pretend… they’re the Glaives.”

“Yeah,” Chambers said, stepping right beneath the half-finished mezzanine, “I used to do it all the tim–”

The first flechette struck the crown of his helmet dead-on before skipping off sideways a second later. More shots rained down. Impacts danced and deflected from Avo’s body now, and the ricochets beside him indicated a similar case with Kae herself. With each shot, he felt his Meldskin brace and push, the armor nudging direct shots off-course in a manner not so unlike his haemokinesis. With the smart fluid hardening into impenetrable densities on the exterior, deforming just enough to redirect the projectiles, and sustaining a gel-like cushion along the interior, not even blunt force touched their bodies.

Physics still had a say as Chambers and Kae lurched due to the paltriness of their weight, but neither of them had trouble standing or enduring the onslaught.

Armor Integrity: 94%

->Adapting to kinetic damage

->Forming fullerene spines

And then the flechettes started shattering against them outright. Thin blades of matter–edges narrower than the tungsten needle itself–split hardened alloy into parted pieces. Clicks and whines of empty magazines screamed out from the guns above, and Chambers chuckled to himself, shaking his head.

“Fuck me, Avo,” he said, “getting nabbed by you was the best thing that ever happened to me. Look at this shit? Loogatitdd.” He gestured to the countless spikes laying broken at his sides, broken against his new skin. “Another life and I’d be one of the poor shits shooting down about to die. About to die.”

Armor Integrity: 100%

->Structure Stabilized

Wearer Status: Optimal

As gangers upstairs scrambled to reload their weapons, the soberer ones breaking and running, and Chambers’ body language grew stiff and distance. “Another life, I’d be… killing myself. I was one of them. I was.”

“Chambers?” Kae said. The man gave no response. “Aedon? Are you alright?”

Snapping out of his trance, he swept out a hand and the floor vanished in a vortex of flames. Screams from lungs and servos bled into one another bodies cooked inside the rigs that once protected them. Two gangers flung themselves down before Avo, tearing helmets from faces, the heated metal taking skin along with it.

The relief was short-lived as bugs speared out from the fires and burrowed into their orifices. Kae flinched as a burst of force surged out from the Chambers’ Meldskin.

{Thrusters,} Calvino explained. {Back in the day, we had to have dedicated module for that, but with self-arranging materials–}

“I tire of the machine's constant boasting, master,” the Woundshaper interrupted, leering as Chambers shot through the floor above and waded into the blaze unscathed. “What specialty is this? Flight? Truly? Even the mule can do such a thing. How special could it be.”

The Galeslither spat a weary scoff. “Not special at all. Which is why your people imagined you to be a tower. Rooted to the ground. Incapable of walking, let alone flight.”

“My structures would have consumed the world!”

“Yet, they never made it free of the cancerous hell you call a home. A dirge is in order for your lost potential.”

“Bah. I will speak no more of my glory to you, mule. All you know is mockery. You would have never even endured a day in the harshness of the Skuld. Only the truest–”

“Ghoul. I have changed my mind. I no longer wish to be free. I only wish to be free of her.”

“--Avo? Avo?” Kae’s voice cut through the argument. “Are you alright? You were just staring off for a moment.”

“Gods arguing again,” he said. “Calvino. Was saying something?”

{Hm? Oh, no, I’ll talk about that later. Say, can you go back to focusing on your Heavens again? I like listening to them argue. The other EGIs will love to hear it as well.}

Avo grunted and acquiesced. Shooting another look at the rapidly vanishing pockets of thoughtstuff upstairs, he restrained his own will to kill and let Chambers have this.

Besides, he was rapidly losing the taste for this… slaughter.

Killing gangers, enforcers, the small…

He thought he was beginning to understand what Draus meant by “weight.” Soft meat was bad for one’s fangs–bad for one’s living if harshness was the be on the horizon.

Perhaps that was what Chambers glimpsed just now. The wretch that he was, the wretch that he could have been, if only for a single poor run, a single bad decision, and the single intersection between him and Avo that spared him from lesser living.

Calvino. {Ah. That’s the ugly-beauty of the universe, Avo. Your free-will only gets up to the tip of your nows, but a whole lot of who you are is already carved and grooved to fit the world your born into.}

“I have to change more,” Avo said. “Going to face the Guilds. Going to hunt other ‘Clads.” He looked down at the bugs feasting on the cooked flesh of the dead gangers, at Kae, standing off to the side, unwilling to join in with Chambers, at the rising intensity of the fire, and the last member of their cadre, thoughts wild but mind empty.

“Kae. Come.” The Agnos shot the ghoul a look as he gestured for her to follow. “Let’s go. Find the vat. Find one of my brothers. Alter Heavens afterward.”

“But… what about Chambers?”

“It’s his catharsis,” Avo said. “His struggle. Let him have it. He should get to be someone too.” Avo stomped down on the skull of a dead ganger, crushing bone outside and bugs within. “Someone meant to be more than a corpse.”