Nobody Do Voodoo Like You Do

January 2068

Pacifica, Night City

Siren's Call Amusements (formerly)

Saint Cog's Home for Unwanted Borgs (currently) (unofficial)

Someone was banging on the door to the basement of my building, so I shifted some of my awareness to the Dragoon "drone" that I kept down there. As far as anyone else was concerned, this was a borderline cyberpsycho Borg recluse. I hadn't installed my consciousness on my crystalline supercomputer that was hidden one floor below yet, though. I was waiting for both my Hana and Hasumi bodies to get the genetic treatments that would make such an expansion less hard on my collective brain meats.

Still, it was fairly simple to find some downtime in one of my bodies to shift awareness to the Dragoon. Hana was off duty right now, so I stopped watching videos from her body, and it went into a kind of torpor as if I was playing a VR game because that was exactly what I was doing.

The Dragoon had a ridiculous number of sensors, enough that it was a bit of a strain on my combined sensory cortexes, actually. Fortunately, I could do what most Dragoon pilots couldn't usually do. Namely, turn some of it off, or modify how it was presented.

You got faster reaction times if you just dumped the sensory information into the brain, so that was what most Dragoon users were forced to do. And while I could still shift to that mode, for now, most of the electromagnetic, radiation, ultrasonic, LIDAR, and a couple of other sensors were shifted to be rendered as overlays on my visual senses. I briefly tested each overlay, finding them working properly, and patted "myself" down for the weapons I carried.

Unfortunately, I had sold the giant Soviet autocannon that came with this body to Wakako, and it was a bit difficult in these trying times to acquire such things. Honestly, even before the war, I would have some difficulties acquiring it. That thing was in the nature of an anti-aircraft weapon, and with the Dragoon's normal synthetic aperture radar being able to shift to an anti-air phased array mode, it was definitely possible to use it in that capacity. Weapons on that scale made people a little nervous.

Hasumi might have been able to buy them before I was kidnapped, but most of the guns I had bought were at or below the fifty calibre level. So, instead, I just had a few weapons. I used the 23mm double-barrel shotgun that a man used to fatally wound Gloria as a pistol. I had given it to her as a souvenir, but she thought it was creepy and had only kept it because she didn't know how to get rid of it without hurting my feelings. She had been quite relieved when I asked if I could borrow it. On my other hip was a Burya, which I could wield with my off-hand. The huge electromagnetic revolver was uniquely suited for Borgs, and it looked almost small in my giant mitts.

I also had a prodigious sword. In normal use, I kept it in a back scabbard. Normally back scabbards were ridiculous, as it was quite impossible for a human's arm to effect pulling one out. However, a Dragoon didn't have the same physical limitations regarding a joint's field of movements as the human body did, and I could snap it out of its sheath in a fraction of a second. I had wanted it to be a Claymore-styled sword, but I couldn't find any monoswords in that style in the city, and I didn't want to put myself on anyone's radar by custom-ordering one. It was still similar in size, but it was a traditional katana. Or "daikatana," I supposed, given its increased size.

Lastly, my SmartGun turret—I couldn't find any replacement for the guided micro missiles that the box launcher on my shoulder utilised. However, I had stripped down one of the smallest auto-turret systems you could purchase on the street and installed it on my shoulder in the missile launcher's place. It was a bit smaller than the box launcher that it replaced and utilised SmartGun ammo, so I could mentally designate targets, up to twelve, using the same tactical system the missile launcher used, and engage them all simultaneously. If attacking from ambush, I could mow down a whole gaggle of people with just this alone.

In my opinion, my kludge gun was superior to the missile launcher in most situations, just due to the increased ammunition capacity. The only use case where it was inferior was against armour. It also looked scary, which was one of the main reasons I included it.

"What is it?!" I yelled, my vocaliser being an ambiguous composite of a number of human voices from men to women. It ended up sounding kind of computerised and frightening. It wasn't very comforting to hear because it wasn't a good sign, psychologically, that a Borg disavowed his or her own voice. It was a sign of disassociation from their humanity, especially when voices of differing genders were used. Even regular people would recognise that.

"Uhhh... boss, there is an emergency. Check the News feed on the net; we're being invaded!" the man, who I believe was named John, yelled through the door.

An invasion? Of the building?! None of my security alerts were going off, but one of the only groups that might invade us were sneaky, deadly netrunners. Why would it be on the net, though? I quickly checked the net with one thread of awareness while carefully inspecting all of the security systems and drones with another, having Dr Hasumi pause in her work to do so.

Oh. Invaded. Yes. This would take some thinking. I yelled back, "I'm coming up! Three minutes!"

The man yelling through my door was John. He was one of the Alphas that were living here that I had worked on as my real self. I had about a little over a dozen people living here now, including that man in the Eclipse. And while we weren't quite a "gang" yet, I wasn't sure if anyone believed that. Perhaps not even John, with how he called me "boss."

My intention had been to ride the Pacifica district down the drain, not really helping at all. This was to further obfuscate both my fourth "body" as well as my cloning facility in the sub-basement. However, I couldn't, in the end, go along with it. It was a bit too... pragmatic. It sounded like a good idea until I saw the people living around here get victimised daily.

The housing in Pacifica was mostly utilised by former workers in Pacifica, too, which made the situation all the more tragic. I couldn't, in the end, just watch them suffer predation—at least not the ones directly in front of my face. There was way too much injustice in the world to be expected to solve all of it, but getting to the point where I could ignore it right in front of me wasn't the type of person I wanted to become. I had told David not to practice what he didn't want to become, so I had to take my own advice here.

I was about seven blocks inside of Pacifica, which was still on the edge of the district, but even before some of the hardware and drones I had bought from Kang Tao and British Aerospace arrived, I shifted Kiwi's mercenary company to attack instead of defence. Hiring them for months on end was actually ridiculously expensive—over one hundred grand a month, not including bonuses which I generally awarded for any successful combat, depending on the danger involved.

People didn't become mercenaries to make a pittance, and I didn't ask for any friend or family discount either. I had intended to release them now that my security was set up, but what were a few extra hundred thousand Eurodollars more in the grand scheme of things?

The NCPD had already stopped responding to calls in Pacifica completely, so all manners of ne'er-do-wells were attracted like flies to a bloating corpse. A good analogy, I thought. Scavs and what I liked to call "Scav-adjacent" gangs were the most common of the disorganised rabble coming in, and that's what I hired Kiwi to attack. Mainly to defend three apartment buildings within a radius of about ten blocks from the Siren's Call.

I had to be satisfied with that. If I pushed any further, I would be declaring war on the organised gangs that were battling further to the south. The organised gangs were fighting over the really good real estate near the main Playpark, with the Voodoo Boys being the largest group slugging it out.

I didn't much care for the Haitian gang for a number of reasons. Really good netrunners frightened me, for one, and secondly, after they acquired a block of real estate, they would conduct what could only be described as an ethnic cleansing of the area. It hadn't reached the level of being a pogrom quite yet, but anyone living there that wasn't Haitian was told, in no uncertain terms, to get the fuck out.

They were as insular and clannish as West Virginia hillbillies and thrice as dangerous. I could understand their motivations after their entire island was destroyed—they wanted a new home. And Pacifica was probably ideal due to the huge amount of computing and networking resources just ripe for the taking.

However, I didn't think it justified their methods here. I had also watched them briefly ally with another gang before betraying them and wiping them out to the last man when they had outlived their usefulness, so they could not be trusted at all, which was unfortunate because I would likely have to deal with them at least a little due to this invasion. It would depend if the Night City government mobilised their militia forces to expel the invaders, but most people on the City Council, aside from Lucius Rhyne's Devolutionist Party, were suggesting that the NUSA not be provoked.

Sighing, I stood up.

I didn't have a lot of furniture down here because not a lot of furniture could withstand the mass of this body, so I generally just sat on a steel table that I had welded a back on to make something akin to a chair. One of the guy's called it an Iron Throne, so I had the idea to weld weapons of defeated enemies to it, but I haven't had the time thus far.

I grabbed my sword and snapped it onto place on my back, and walked up the stairs. On one shoulder was a small boxy-like snub-nosed turret, and on the other was a greatsword's hilt. I liked to think that I was intimidating. John and the man who ran the Militech Eclipse was waiting for me. The latter didn't have a name, at least not one he would volunteer.

All I knew about him was that he hated Arasaka and, in the past, had lost himself to his grudge against them. He said he had lived as almost a total cyberpsycho for at least a decade on the fringes of society. Something snapped him back to partial lucidity, though. Still, he had been the closest to an out-and-out cyberpsycho that I had treated, which had been a little scary, although he had calmed down significantly since then.

He was also the most mercenary of my tenants. Apparently, he wanted to buy himself a Gemini and retire, so he was taking Edgerunner-style jobs around the city now that most of his stealth systems were functioning again. I couldn't replace his finger rocket because what the fuck... who made a finger into a rocket-propelled grenade anyway? But I had replaced the finger with a standard version and got the rest of his systems working.

Me and Wakako gave him most of his jobs, as he was too scarily capable not to keep busy. Otherwise, someone else might end up hiring him against my interests, so I made busy work for him when other things couldn't be found. I had also, as Taylor, told him that I would be more than willing to buy his Eclipse as a trade-in, which would save him quite a lot of money, too. At his rate, he'd have enough money saved in a year or less.

He was also the Borg I wanted to see the most right now. His voice synthesiser spoke in an affected German accent, but I was almost positive that wasn't his real background. Still, it gave me a name to call him, "Herr Schatten, John... do we have any ID on the visitors?" For some reason, Herr Schatten, or Mr Shadow, seemed to think the name I had picked for him was very amusing. When I asked about it in the past, he just called it somewhat familiar and nostalgic, then refused to comment further.

John shook his head, "Not precisely. The news is saying it is the NUSA. Night City government is denying it, though. Surprisingly, the NUSA is also denying it."

Shadow shifted from left to right and said, "NUSA Army. 10th SFG, from the joint base in El Centro. I'm confident."

I groaned, which sounded particularly unsettling coming out of my speakers. Just what we needed, an entire Airborne special forces group. Did that mean that the NUSA was invading? Was the 10th setting up a beachhead in the south?

I asked intensely, "The whole group?!" The whole 10th Special Forces Group was the equivalent of a brigade of hardened special operators and all their accoutrements, including artillery and armoured vehicles.

He shook his head, "I think just the second battalion, along with the group HQ elements."

Professional curiosity got the better of me, "How did they insert a whole battalion, including a brigade HQ?"

He shrugged, "Standard doctrine would involve a company or platoon-level HALO jump at high altitude, secure a landing strip and land the rest using heavy-lift fixed-wing assets. They don't have an airport, so I think they probably did parachute in but called in air cav elements to insert the rest in low radar-cross-section AVs and helicopters. That is congruent with the reported helicopter and turbine noise in the south of the district, too."

Well, that would limit the equipment they could have brought with them. They wouldn't have howitzers or armoured scout cars, at least. I said, "Herr Schatten, would you be willing to recon where they are bivouacked and possibly divine any intentions that they have? We obviously can't fight them, and I don't want to in any case."

He shifted from left to right again and said, "These guys aren't the junkies with Saturday night specials or greaseball mobsters that we've been up against before. They are all well-equipped operators, one and all. I won't be able to get too close, or they will detect me."

That wasn't a no, I felt. I pressed lightly, "I don't need to know where their Colonel is bunking, just the edges of their AO and whether or not they're expanding to the north."

Finally, he nodded and then vanished from my optical and thermal sensors and departed. He was still slightly visible on my synthetic aperture radar as he darted out of my line of sight, but the return didn't look like a human body, so it could have been discounted as a radar artefact.

"Alright, sit tight for now," I told John, who saluted and headed back to his room, which surprised me. I kind of forgot sometimes that almost all of the Borgs living with me were former servicemen and women, so it wasn't unusual that they might fall back into this former behaviour. I had, as Taylor, even been told by a couple that they'd liked the atmosphere of the building, and it reminded them of the camaraderie of their time in the service.

I had never told them that I was their boss, now, though. Still, I was the biggest Borg on the block, and people tended to look to me for leadership, especially since I was the one who laid down the rules about living here and was in charge of the building. The rules mainly consisted of "don't be a psycho" and "don't endanger the building." Pretty simple. Oh, yeah, and "don't hassle the ripperdoc if she is making house calls." Since that "ripperdoc" was me, I felt that was the most important rule of all.

I had set up a whole clinic, including specialised equipment to perform maintenance on Borgs, here in the building, and I tended to come over as needed. There was quite a bit of curiosity about who "the Big Guy" was that he could get a Ripperdoc qualified to work on full body replacements and pay an obvious merc company for security services, but whenever people asked Taylor, I just demurred and said I was paid in cash, and that was all I cared about.

Speaking of merc companies, Kiwi was calling me. I wanted to talk to her, so this was good. I picked up and immediately asked, "Where are you at right now, Kiwi?"

"Me and first squad are on a standard Scav sweep-and-clear around the abandoned buildings nearby. It's like whack-a-mole, I tell you. I just saw the news. Do you know what is going on?" she asked.

I relayed what Herr Shadow had told me and got many obscenities in response. She said, "If they start pushing north, we will have to abandon everything, you know that, right? We can't fight the fucking Army."

I did, but I didn't think it was likely. Or, at least, I hoped it wasn't likely. They couldn't take even this district with just a battalion. Unless a division was being mobilised and surged up from LA, then I suspected that they were here to establish a credible, defensible beachhead where an infantry division could assault from. Either because such an operation was planned, and if so, we really would have to either abandon everything or turn our coats. Alternatively, it was because they wanted the Night City government or the Free States to think such an invasion was planned. It was likely the chaos in Pacifica that had them thinking such an operation could be conducted in the first place.

Honestly, with how heavily armed and unruly the Night City populace was, it would likely take a close to a Corps to truly pacify the city, and I didn't think the NUSA could spare that kind of manpower. The stage where mercenaries were fighting mercenaries was over, mostly, and now front-line units were fighting each other all along the border. I was hoping that this was just a feint. The Free States would have to honour the threat if it was credible and shift forces to box up Night City from the north if they thought the city would fall to NUSA, which might be taken advantage of by the NUSA side somewhere else.

Colorado had already fallen to the NUSA, and some unstated accommodation was made between the Republic of Texas and the NUSA, so they weren't threatening to nuke each other anymore, so it was mainly just the Pacific Northwest doing the fighting now.

Kiwi continued, "Second squad is holed up in the Apartment building on Nymph Boulevard, acting as a Quick Reaction Force for the area. But I'm gonna wake third and forth squads up and have them come to Saint Cog's."

I grimaced, "I told you not to call it that, Cado." Much to my displeasure, the name "Saint Cog's Home for Unwanted Borgs" had become popular, with a few of my tenants actually spray-painting little cogs around the area as if they were gang signs. Could I actually call them tenants if I didn't charge them rents? I did make a little money acting as an ISP and renting or selling braindance equipment to them, though, but it was all small potatoes.

It turned out that most of the Borgs here were hardcore gamers. I suppose that made sense if you were in a deteriorating body to escape into a nicer virtual one, but they were BD enthusiasts, one and all.

"Hahaha, I am Kiwi again, don't you know? Once I saw that Biotechnica wasn't going to squash you, I figured it safe enough to resume many of my old relationships and connections. Got my old tats redone, too," she said, amused. That was still a risk, in my opinion. Taylor Hebert's link to Gram was semi-public knowledge, and it could be easily found out who my mother, Annette was. That was probably protection against such a minor infraction all on its own. Kiwi was not me, but on the other hand, she was different than she used to be too. She had a force of arms that she didn't have before, so it might not be seen as worth it if they just wanted to send a message.

"Hold!" she suddenly said, her tone entirely different and serious. "Stand by, Taylor. Let me call you back." She then disconnected.

I blinked, hoping she didn't run into any Army men. She and her team looked far too uniform and paramilitary. The NUSA Army would likely consider her forces of Night City military forces scouting around in the absence of any other data and attack.

She called back before I could worry too much, and I immediately answered, "Hey, T. A few Voodoo Boys stopped us on our patrol; everything seems peaceful for right now, but they want to talk to The Big Guy. Is he... uhh... available?"

Kiwi knew that I drove around the Dragoon like a drone. It would be hard for her not to realise it was me since she helped me bring it back to the base, but she thought I just had some jam-resistant wireless tech to do so. She was a little sceptical about it, but after she couldn't hack into it herself, she shrugged and admitted that it seemed pretty effective.

Still, I scowled. I was kind of expecting this. "The Big Guy" had a reputation of being a hikikomori, after all, and he had only left the building a couple of times to eradicate a particularly large group of Scavs. I had done this primarily to build a reputation, but also because they had actually been a threat to one of Kiwi's squads.

If the Voodoo Boys wanted to talk to "him", then they'd have to come to the Siren's Call, and maybe they thought just walking up to the front door wasn't precisely healthy.

I nodded and said, "Yes... he's up and about, as they say. But give us at least fifteen minutes before you lead those sneaky fucks back here if you don't mind."

"Roger," she said, but in a jaunty French way, sounding more like Ro-jair, "There's three of them, one runner and two that look like muscle. We'll tell them we need to finish the sweep before we come back. Expect us in twenty."

"Take no chances with them. Do not trust them," I cautioned her again. She acknowledged my warning with a thumbs-up before disconnecting the call.

I wanted to rub my chin, but it wasn't the same when it was made of an armoured plate, so I briefly had my Taylor body do it while writing a chart for a surgery I finished a little while ago. Yes, that was better.

How should I handle this? I thought for a moment before pulling up the chatroom for the building. I used it to make announcements, and all of my tenants were on it. I sent out, "Having a meeting with one of the Voodoo Boys. I need two volunteers to loom behind me, looking dangerous. Also, I will be disabling the building wireless in five minutes, including activating jamming systems. Please shift to a wired connection if you require continued net access. This disruption may last one to two hours."

There were a number of replies, a few dismayed at the wireless cutting out. One man claimed he was in a 100-man instanced raid and couldn't disconnect. He begged someone to come into his room and plug him in, and someone finally agreed after a suitable bribe was offered and promised.

A couple of the guys agreed to come downstairs, including John, and at about the same time, I noticed Kiwi's third and fourth squads jogging over to my building. I told them to take positions where they could defend the approaches to the building, and possibly respond to the main room but to make themselves not be seen.

John and one of the rare female Alphas came down the stairs, each carrying a Militech Crusher in one hand as if it were a pistol. I waved them over and told them what to expect. I didn't expect that they would need to do anything at all, but if the Voodoo Boys had three people, I wanted them to see three of "my people."

After five minutes, I clicked a mental button and all of the wireless access points in my building shifted to jammers instead. They'd jam all outside net access from my building, but people could still use some short-range wireless communications. The way my visual processor overlayed the jammers on my visual field was rather annoying, with points of radiating static.

As such, I shifted my electromagnetic sense away from a visual overlay and dumped it into my sensory cortex, wincing a little as I was momentarily disoriented. If one of them was a netrunner, even if I was jamming outgoing net connections they might be able to connect to someone or something with the short-range wireless protocol.

Nodding, I told John and the other Alpha-series, "EMCON protocols active. Disable all of your radios manually. One of them is some sneaky fucking runner."

They both grimaced, sort of. Borgs had a fairly universal distaste for netrunners because being hacked was a really big deal for them. Although I didn't need the wireless to continue accessing the subnet, I didn't want to publicise that, so I grabbed a long data cable and plugged it into one of the outlets by the reception desk and sat there, waiting.

About ten minutes later, I saw both Kiwi and the three strangers walking up to the building at a slow pace. As they got closer, I disconnected the Dragoon from it's own radio. It still appeared to be active, but it only was connected to a honeytrap that had an epic ton of ICE of increasing lethality. Even if a runner managed to completely infiltrate the system, it wasn't really connected to the Dragoon body anymore. It could send me limited messages, and only in text, and that was it.

"Boss, these three were the ones wanting to talk to you. This one is called Marie Antoinette. I don't know the other two," Kiwi said as the whole group entered the building. Was that really her name? I wondered.

I nodded and said, "Dismiss your men, but you stay." Then I shifted to look at the strangers. One was a woman, rather pretty and dressed in a figure-hugging netrunner suit with a cloak over it. Casually, I designated each of them with four reticles apiece using my SmartLink targeting system. If I hit the button, my turret would fire twelve rounds in less than half of a second, and each target would take three in the chest and one in the head before I could say Bob's your uncle.

As I glanced at the netrunner's eyes, I frowned as I noticed a flurry of radio-frequency transmissions from her, starting omnidirectional and shifting to directional and directed at me. They were obviously modulated for encoding data and appeared to be hundreds of different initial handshakes using differing protocols. Then, I got an alert from the dummy plug that was simulating my open wireless port.

[Dummy Plug: Incoming port scan...]

[Dummy Plug: First layer ICE bypassed...]

[Dummy Plug: Second layer ICE bypass in progress...]

The Dragoon's electromagnetic sense was hooked partially into its cyberwarfare suite, even through the Dummy Plug, so as soon as I got a notification that I was being port-scanned, the feeling of the radio-frequency transmission she was sending out changed. It wasn't solely a visual sense. When it was dumped into my sensory cortex, it used almost all of my senses, and more besides. So, immediately, it became something akin to flashing red, hot to the touch, and with an awful smell.

My hand snapped up and "grabbed" the transmission without me thinking about it, the sense of proprioception also being hooked up. As soon as I "grabbed" it, I got another notification.

[Dummy Plug: Infiltrator connection isolated.]

I saw her wince slightly, and I moved. First, I crushed the connection in my hand.

[Dummy Plug: Connection terminated. Blacklist updated.]

At the same time, I lunged. I was incredibly quick, at both my maximum physical speed of the body as well as the maximum reaction speed of my mind. In almost no time at all, I had closed the ten metres between us, whipped out my giant sword and had it pointed very close to the woman's throat.

Her eyes widened in shock, and her two bodyguards just barely started reacting, but both Kiwi and her men, who hadn't even left the room yet, startled and pointed guns at all three of them. Even they realised that if they went for their weapons, they wouldn't live too much longer than that.

At first, I was planning on taking the lady netrunner's head off, as I didn't know why she had tested my cybersecurity. But I thought that it might have been a reflex, so I decided against it. Instead, I growled, intentionally using words and phrases that would sound a bit foreign to any of my identities, "If you try that again, you'll end up like your namesake – right here, cake bitch. Savvy?"

Also, I wanted to use "savvy?" in a sentence. Sue me. She held her hands up placatingly and even bowed her head a little. She had a pretty noticeable but not unpleasant accent, "I apologise, Saturday's Hand. I'm used to always having a connection to the net, and getting disconnected when I walked in here startled me."

Saturday's Hand? What the fuck did that mean? Also, I didn't know that I believed her. That was exactly what I was afraid she would do! But I slowly slid my sword back into its scabbard and took three large steps backwards, giving her and her men some personal space.

I waved both the Alphas and Kiwi's men, and they casually lowered their weapons too. A line of text popped up on my visual field, an encrypted transmission from Kiwi. It hit my Dummy Plug too, but sending limited messages to me was one of the few things it was capable of doing.

>Kiwi: Hacking attempt?

I couldn't really reply at the moment, so I just nodded once at her, who scowled. I stared at the Voodoo Boys for a moment longer before saying, "What the fuck do you want?"

"We came to warn you about the invaders entering the district, and possibly offer our assistance," she said, much more respectfully, "We have intelligence about just who they are that might be useful."

I grabbed the data connection that had unplugged itself when I lunged at the strangers, plugged it back in and sent a message to Herr Shadow. He might not respond, depending on where he was.

However, this time I was lucky. He replied, along with a few files that were overlays for a map, showing about a third of the "front" down south. The map was quite fancy, and colour-coded even. He included a text saying that they seem to be digging in thus far, not gearing up to invade to the north.

"Speak, then," I said, trying to sound cool.

She nodded and said, "We're almost certain they're elements from the NUSA military. We have confirmed they have at least four hundred heavily armed soldiers, and they're currently making mincemeat of the gangs in the very south of Pacifica. We're concerned that we, and as extension, you, will be next."

I pointed at a SmartWall, and it activated, showing the map file I had just received, and said, "They are the NUSA Army 10th Special Forces Group, 2nd Batallion, Airborne. Commanded by a Colonel Kurt Hansen. They do not appear to be readying for a massive thrust into Pacifica proper just yet, so as far as I am concerned, they are not my problem."

All three of them looked surprised, although the runner covered up her shock better. She coughed and said, "That is... quite interesting. Might I ask how you came about this information?"

"No," I said, simply and forcefully. I paused momentarily, "If that's all you have, message received. Get out." However, I briefly reconnected my wireless, dismissing the dummy plug so that I could transfer her a Contact Card wirelessly. It was the contact details I had made for the Dragoon "identity", "Contact me on the net if you have anything more to say or if they become an actual threat."

She looked slightly upset at first, but after I sent her my contact details seemed mollified and nodded, "Of course, Saturday's Hand." Her two bodyguards looked upset at her being so deferential to me, but I had almost killed them all, so I personally thought they were really self-unaware of their own position in the world right now.

I stared at them until they collectively turned around and walked out the door. I didn't deactivate the jammers right away, either. I glanced at Kiwi, "Can you make sure they didnt drop some tiny little device that does god knows what? Like some sort of proxy for invading our subnet?"

She looked briefly startled at the idea before nodding, looking around and retracing the steps the Voodoo contingent had taken since entering the property, going as far back as the parking lot. Finally, she returned and said, "Looks clear, I think."

Well, that was good enough for me. I disabled the jammers, and re-enabled the wireless access points, sending a message to the building chatroom at the same time, "Wireless re-enabled."

"Emission control protocols deactivated, you two," I said at John and the other Alpha, "I think we're done here for now." They nodded and ambled away.

Kiwi walked over and asked, "Can we talk privately?"

"Downstairs," I said, and she followed me down.

Once we were alone, I shifted so that it was my normal voice speaking, "What's up?" I hopped up on the steel table I used as a chair.

"I am surprised you sent them packing so decisively," she said, "We would probably need their help if the NUSA make a nuisance of themselves."

I shrugged, "I'm playing the role of a borderline cyberpsycho. There is no way he would have acquiesced to any kind of collaboration at the first meeting. I bet she wasn't that high up in the Voodoo Boys, either. How good of a hacker was she?"

Kiwi made a waffling gesture, and I nodded, "Potentially disposable if I was less lucid than they thought I was going to be. Do you have any idea what Saturday's Hand means?"

"No, but they say all sorts of weird quasi-spiritual bullshit," she said very disapprovingly.

I shrugged, "Besides... if I was too accommodating, we'd just be turned into a cat's paw to be disposed of after we were no longer useful. I really don't trust these guys."

Kiwi shook her head, "No, I am right there with you. I just thought it was out of character; normally, you give people more leeway, and your first instinct if things are serious is always cooperation or conflict avoidance."

Was it? What counted as serious? I wanted to bite my lip in thought, but instead, I just shrugged, "So I put on a good performance, then?"

She gave me a double thumbs up, "Yeah, totally nova. Do we have any story as to why you have so much money that you can hire my team?"

I shrugged, "I can't think of anything. I obfuscated the source of the funds pretty well, but of course, this is a gang of professional netrunners. I think any story we would make up would tend to backfire, so let's just stay mysterious. They'll probably concoct more interesting stories themselves, wondering about it anyway."

Hana got a message inviting her to dinner with her workgroup. It wasn't good to decline those invitations too often, so I said, "I gotta go; I'm going send you Herr Schatten's data after he finishes scouting the perimeter of the soldiers. We do need to think about what our options will be. I'd rather not lose all I invested here, but our lives are more important."

Really, I meant her life. Still, I could move everything out of the sub-basement in a hurry if I really had to. It would ruin a lot of my plans, though. Even if I lost everything in this building, including having the Dragoon go down with the ship, so long as I got my special crystal out of harm's way first, it would just be an annoying setback.

She nodded, "Right. Maybe we'll be lucky, and the NUSA guys will eradicate all of the other gangs and then just go home."

I doubted we'd be that lucky. Also, other gangs?

Shaking my head, I sat down and deactivated the Dragoon.

---xxxxxx---

Space Station 13

In Close Proximity of Galileo Cylinder, Metastable Lagrange Point 3 (Earth-Moon)

Finding myself back in my cramped stateroom and in half-gravity, I sent a message to my work leader accepting the invitation before stripping off all of my clothes and hopping into the shower.

I would have to prioritise, somehow, making it to the Crystal Palace and getting seen by one of the geneticists there. I had been here long enough that I was due a little time off, wasn't I?

But perhaps I could make it a working trip. My boss had asked me if I was interested in playing bodyguard to rich groundsiders on account of how Hana looked fucking super jacked and dangerous. Most long-time spacers tended to the lithe and tall body types and didn't look as dangerous, even if they were.

They also had something of a distaste for physical cybernetics, so my Kerenzikov, high-end subdermal armour and Strong Arms really did make me ridiculously dangerous, even unarmed.

Nodding, maybe I could be some rich tourist's bodyguard for a couple of weeks. That would give me some time at the Crystal Palace after I escorted them background side.

Then it was just a matter of getting Hasumi seen. I'd just tell Yuki to schedule it. I had already performed the modifications on Taylor, and it might have been a little hesitancy that caused me not to prioritise it, but I think I needed to do so now, especially if I ended up fleeing Pacifica in disgrace.

I wished the war between states, or whatever they were calling it, would end already. Not only were an incredible amount of lives being ruined, but my plans too!

I had a couple of minutes after I got dressed before my door chime rang. I called out, "Wole wa!" This caused the door to automatically unlock and open, revealing one of the grinning members of my workgroup.

He asked in Yoruba, which was the preferred internal language in our workgroup, which I had to pick up pretty quickly when I first started working, "You ready, giant lady?" The latter word was a kind of slang, and it meant more along the lines of "giant babe", I thought.

I audibly cracked my knuckles before saying in the same language, "You know I can break you in half, right?"

"Don't tease, giant lady!" he said, laughing, and we left for dinner with the rest.