BLACK SWORDS INC CH17 AND 18

    CHAPTER 17

    I couldn't stop crying silently. The reminders of my past were strewn around me like missing toys. There was nothing that could seem to bring him solace and the only things that he had were packs of noodles and cans of vegetables. It was the kind of life that being stuck in the middle of things would seem to bring at an older age. I had once been someone, a great leader for freedom and justice who became a great betrayer of both of those things. I had risen above and overcome many great obstacles in my life with the help of many but no one these days seemed to be interested in the trail I had left. After the raid with Taina on the V'Halsen databanks I had lost something great in this life. A sense of belonging and purpose and love. Sure Jin was there for me these days but Ulrich seemed to be more focused on the data that they had recovered than the return to the Durik safehouse that had become nessecary. They were locked in and safe for sure but somehow and for some reason Jakk just wanted to see his mother and brother and find that they were happy. The last uprising had come and gone and not much had changed. There were still regular MP patrols and now I had a front row seat to watch the MPs go about their daily business in their own sector.

    But still, I was terrified.

    Still I was angry.

    Instilled with courage, he had made a difference.

    Jin was walking up the stairs when she head him in his room. Mell was walking around in the main hallway of the building looking upset. The telltale signs of aftershock were all around Sal as she walked in. He had his rig up but nothing was running on the screen and the headset was flickering in the darkness. She spoke up.

    "So did it take a lot out of you or..."

    I shook my head.

    She grinned, remembering what that had looked like before his dreads were cut.

    "Felt like a betrayal."

    She set the bag of groceries she'd been carrying down and sat on the chair in front of the machine.

    "Why them?"

    Jin shrugged. She didn't really know either but after sifting through old after action reports and meeting notes they hadn't found much yet. There were some reports of tensions in the Northern Dominion near Belkavisk but it seemed as if that'd be the kind of thing Ulrich was focused on primarily. But that was above their pay grade and she knew it. Fruk it anyways. They killed who they had to kill and hacked who they had to hack. Gods knew it was a good way to get out of the city with the company but now they were back and with nothing to do but wait for Ulrich to turn in his work to whoever he answered to they had to wait. Wait and wait and wait. At least they could people watch.

    She took out a jar of instant and set it on the table.

    "Want some?"

    Jakk nodded, wondering when Taina and Jerri Boy were gonna be back.

    She pulled a strip out from under a recyclable cup and water filled the cup from the bottom and began to boil. She dumped some instant in. Jakk began to salivate and rubbed his knee where the joint had begun to collect salt. He'd had to disconnect the leg and then clean out the cap when it had collected saltwater in the Klerian Sea on the oil platform raid. At least it was clean, but the connection still felt a bit fresh. He picked up his cup and began to sip from it looking at her eyes to maintain a different connection that had been established when they were collecting guns and info at the suites. Home sweet home had begun to feel like home sweet fruk and boy oh boy did I wish we could get to a bar but none of the MPs trusted us enough for a drink at the bars in the sector they lived in. Jin hadn't even gone to the store but just had one of the kids make a quick run to what many called the PX store so we didn't instigate suspicion.

    "Ulrich sure knows how to pick 'em," she said lighting up a real smoke.

    I grinned and took a few more sips.

    The problem with instant was it was always bitter.

    "Oh yeah," he said suddenly turning around. "The apples are rotten and the oranges are lost."

    She laughed like music.

    Mell grumbled something outside the door.

    The steam was rolling in from the river outside. Jakk rubbed the back of his head and leaned back on the bed.

    "Do we have anything spicy?" Jin asked.

    "Noodles are in the crate."

    ***

    Harom and Ulrich were still combing over the data at a local C-Fed station and finding everything they couldn't find without the box from the Crater. Harom kept stroking his freshly shaven beard and jaming away on a holokeyboard while Ulrich looked at the data that was streaming on the display. They had found the V'Halsen connection to a Belkaviskan trandimensional lab about fifteen days earlier and had to put up a network barrier so hard the MPs were getting interference on their comms and were getting antsy. Ulrich liked antsy MPs. Antsy MPs were Ulrich's happiest scenery and the if they were antsy they bitched like mother frukers. If they bitched like mother frukers to the brass the mother frukers in the brass ended up cracking down on VHM in the prison blocks. If the prison blocks got busted down there was time for energy and more parties. At least that's how Sal saw it and Ulrich could hardly understand his lowbrow sense of style.

    "This is fascinating." Harom said.

    "How so?" asked Ulrich.

    Harom brought up three screens on the display like opening a coffin.

    They were that low on CPU speed.

    "They're using energy from dead star cells to make-"

    A siren went off down the street and they froze. Ulrich stood up and looked behind him. What was that, he wondered. Maybe the shield wall had cracked. They got quieter and quieter as they rode off into the distance. As that happened the wall cracked and the system error messages began to pop up.

    "Oh no."

***

    Taina got the call first in the basement of the safehouse as her and Jerri were coiled up with each other both sick as dogs after the jump out they got from the MPs. Jerri slept soundly as she crept up the stairs to the top floor, her feet light and her head lighter. There was no way she could get through to them from the basement and was met by the sound of Sal and Jin snoring in their room. She opened the door.

    "Guys," she barked suddenly.

    Sal awoke with a start and looked at the thinning woman.

    "The fruk?" Jin muttered.

    "They broke through."

    "Who did?"

    "I don't know, man."

    "Fruk fruk FRUK!" I screamed. He saw the phone in her hand. "Give it to me."

    His ear was met with Ulrich's voice.

    "The system is down."

    I gritted my and teeth pulled on some clothing.

    "The fruk do you mean?"

    "We had it, now we don't have it."

    Ulrich cleared his throat audibly.

    "I'll be there soon."

   

***

    The fleet of MP trucks had emptied the garage as Sal walked through the empty plascrete structure with a small courier bag under his shoulder holding his gear. It would be a long night and he waved to a guard, his stomach tight but only got a smile. The door opened and Harom De'Jueve walked out with a cigarette between his lips and his sweating palms in his pockets.

    "Salmon," he said. "You made it."

    Not recognizing the old man I stopped and looked him up and down.

    "Yeah..."

    "Ulrich's up the hall. Come with me."

    I followed the old man into the building and after a while they were in the glowing green and orange room that and instantly found myself at home in. Ulrich stood up, his milked eye glistening under the scar that made his visage threatening and warming to the samurai's core. The older gentleman walked up and shook his hand with a supportive grin. My's stomach tightened more and all I wanted to do was throw up. The good day had gotten confusing.

    Maybe it's what she said.

    "How's Jin?" asked Ulrich.

    I sat down and shrugged.

    "Alright I guess. I'm feeling miserable. What's up?"

    "The system was down but now we're running at fifteen percent and can't seem to recover the data."

    My thumb pressed the scanner on the table and his ident info popped up.

    "No good." he said.

    The login succeeded at least and the room darkned heavily. Sighing I began to type on the manual keyboard once the prompt screen came up and could practically hear the old man's country music playing in his head. Once he was in he saw holes everywhere in the system wall. He could only guess where and what that meant. So much bullshit went through his head that he couldn't stand it. The frukkers had shot the hell out of the system and left a smoking fort in their wake. There were no traces of the data nor the entrants. Everything was gutted. Fruk fruk fruk.

    "It's gone." Probably C-Feds based off of the fruking garage, he thought.

    "What is?"

    I looked at Ulrich with a flabberghasted look that was mixed with disdain.

    I logged and stood up.

    This was bullshit.

    "Everything we did that run for is gone and we broke the MP network. We're fruked."

    "How much so?" asked Harom.

    "They're gonna kick us out, sir."

    "I'll speak with them," Ulrich said.

    I nodded, took the gear I brought in, and headed out.

    Total. Bull. Shit.

    Instantly I began to wish for something better than the merc life.

   

    ***

    On the way to the LE Sector the bastard known as Jakk stopped caring what the MPs thought. They just wanted a camp to run, well they could go to the Northern Dominion for all he cared. That would teach them. Surely it would. Surely. Sure. And like that I fell asleep on the train only to be haunted by another dream about MPs trying to jab a taser up his ass because his shit stunk so fruking bad. At least he wasn't on tetrameth like that guy in the Brissian Regency. But that was easy pickings. BSI was full of dumbasses and so was Sal. I'd glutted out on the way home. Tasty muscley stomach and smelly fruking pigs with ears.

    Hells. He almost felt like a fool himself.

    When he arrived in his old neighborhood the snow had just begun to fall.

    I entered the new apartment building and walked up the stairs noting the cameras had been ripped from their sockets. Fruking freemen probably. It was just as well. I couldn't smell any food cooking in the halls and that didn't bother me any so I made my way up to the top floor and knocked on the door of my mother's apartment. Or at least what had been it. Noise music met me as the door opened and was greeted with a scraggly looking visage of a trench coat wearing freeman.

    "Yeah?"

    I stepped back for a moment.

    "Look squid head I don't care what you-"

    I swung up and punched the freeman in the face without thinking and ran.

    Soon he was in a bar that was empty and full at the same time.

    Broken furniture and broken men.

    A few broken bottles here and there.

    Broken glass on the floor.

    The hood had changed.

    I went to the warehouse but it was completely burnt.

    I went home because no one was there.

    By the time he was in the MP sector there was nearly a foot of snow on the ground and everhything had gone quiet except for the hum of drones buzzing through the air. My fist didn't hurt but he was just too tired to give a fruk. Nothing mattered when it was quiet and that was when he needed more music and he regretted not lifting the files from the new freeman district so he could listen to it. Sadness crept into his bones like a bittersweet symphony and soon he was back in his room laying next to Jin. She had the Net up playing technojazz documentaries and they soaked in it for a while and didn't care how they felt. Everyone was sick of the shit and it they trades small breaths of stinky kisses.

    ***

    The next time we saw the sun we were down south in the Brissian Territories in a truck convoy going through the jungle. Two Hifflon Corp tank walkers were escorting them as they hugged a mountain covered in foilage and as the rain pelted their windshields Harom sang over the comms.

    "How the fruk is he so happy?" grumbled Mell.

    "I just don't know."

    They were moving at a snail's pace and in the dry carapace of the tank walker the movement sensor picked up blips of nothing at all. It was all easy going and nothing mattered but sucking on their dip and taking one step forward at a time. It was easy shit and it was easier to take a shit in there with a big fat diaper on their asses. The man in the walker was called Blue 78. Simple as fruk the pilot was humming along to Harom's classical voice. His eyes were behind a recticle but at least he was reading time. Everyone in the trucks, like the Black Swords were sucking on hot air and drinking sips of blue exhaust. The mission they were tasked with was taking the BSI mercs and the scientist from Hifflon to a secure lab in the jungle city of Re'Boko and then sitting on their asses until they were called upon to move or called upon to just get out since Harom would be running tests very soon. Choppers had flown in earlier with crates of food for the local workers and plenty was about to be eaten at a banquet of enormous proportions. A good haul for sure thought pilot. He felt like hot shit in his little caracpace and piped up on the mic.

    "Hey babe," he said to his lover and team mate.

    "Yeah?" the radio crackled with her voice.

    "Play some different music for our team mates."

    "Why?"

    "Because I can feel them getting antsy."

    Soon more technojazz was playing over the comms and Harom finally shut up. Buncha freaking monsters, thought 78.

    In the truck Harom hung up his headset and began to snap his fingers. Excitement was coursing through the grey bearded man and it was bound to be a great day for science when the transdimensional tests were complete. Much would be accomplished, of this he was sure. It would take no time at all. He had the box from Mishka, the data, as corrupted as it was, stored on a drive that Ulrich and Sal and the rest of the swords knew nothing about. He'd take the credit and everyone would find him sitting on top of the world some day. Yes, of this the man was certain. He was from West Barr'iti and had grown up piloting farm walkers to clear the hydroponic factory farms that hugged the artificial sulfur flats of the city state in order to provide wheat for the bread of the people of the C-Fed. It had gotten him used to long hours in a jacked up HUD helmet, holo displays at a finger's breadth and the pungent smells of acrid diesel. What it hadn't prepared him for until his militia days was the roar of banditos that were driving their hovercrafts over the tree tops that day.

    First came the hum of the masked and motorcycle helmet clad banditos that were loyal to the Regency's last King Maximillian Randolphus VI,

    The golden sea lions emblazoned on the bottoms of the hover platforms streaked by faster than either of the HIfflon Corp could see with their naked eyes but the camera clusters on the hull of the walkers IDed the logos and brought up enemy combat alerts after an infintiesminally timed search against the milintel servers for Hifflon Corp's Territorial Hub. But in that ear searing moment for Mell and his hired guns in the trucks, a rocket screamed from the sky and blew apart the front cabin of the transport vehicles that were trudging through the rainy jungle roadways. Screaming and burning technical staff and a few stunned and bleeding mercs stumbled out of the burnt carcass and the smoke trail from the rocket drifted skywards, disappating into the oily smoke that was now filling the sparsely open sky above them. Blue 78 swung the eight barreled gatling cannon on top of the Jaquar chassis skyward and began raking the air with white hot rounds hungry for a loyalist body to catch and eat away. Blue 21, the rear Jaguar popped smoke grenades to cover the area. Mell's helmet had closed around his face and his HUD began to register the signatures of his team mates as he lept from the truck with his L8 rifle raised and met with the crew in the grey black and orange haze that was pulling Harom and two other techies to the side of the road under the bushes to their right.

    Over the screams and gunfire the buzz of the hovercraft was audible again and gunfire pelted the road catching many of the mercs in the open and leaving a few to dive for cover if they weren't stunned by high explosives popping off around them. It was a fruking hell of an ambush Mell would have thought if he hadn't been dragging someone back from the burnt truck whose leg was tugging along the road at an unatural and bloody mess of an angle.  Blue 78's rockets screamed suddenly as they gained missile locks from the hack targeting systems. Mell and the others were clustered along the hillline at the edge of the road as the rockets contacted above them with thuds to their ringing ears. Blue 21's smooth voice chimed on the comms circuit, "Looks like the craft have been neutralized. Stay woke for the trees holding foot mobiles."

    For a while they did, but nothing was coming.

    Blue 78 gritted his teeth as his sensors picked up nothing.

    No jams.

    Just sudden quiet.

    "Sword 1-1, please advise on current course of action."

    Mell's gnarled voice rang in on the pilot's ears.

    "Check around the bend for one fifty meters with Swords one six, one eight and one ten. They're our heavy team so if you encounter any resistance nearby hit them with everything you have. We'll be here cleaning up."

    "Righto," said 78. "You mercs, form on me. I want you up front about two yards keeping pace in skirmish order."

    Three rogers came up and the mercs formed up on the road in front of the tank walker in their seemingly micro looking exoskeletons. Two of them had heavy machine guns and the third had a rocket launcher with several ready to drop rounds protruding from the slide on a belt. Blue 78 grinned underneath his mic and they began to move out once their chips synced and he could give commands neurally. They made their way around the bend, the rain falling on them slightly faster now and soon they were out of sight of the rest of the column.

    That's when Mell called me in the comms bird high on rotation high above the jungle. It was a big plane with four jet engines and a few titanium coated net attenae potruding from the bottom of it. It was an old plane so I was paying closer attention to the vid screens than the jerry rigged data terminals that the company had placed there. I was bored for most of the trip until our convoy had gotten hit but there had been no way to detect the hovercraft as hostile since they were still using friendly RFIDs. THe database had to update itself and only then were the tank walkers still able to fight them off. The only thing I had noticed nearby was the Hifflon Corp company bomber closing in over the eastern seaboard one hundred and fifty kilometers off. The amount of activity our companies were putting into what seemed to be a stealth op was slightly worrying to me and clearly the former regent's people had picked up on that. There had been no contact with the communist guerrillas in the area and I doubted there would be as they were fighting a different corporation over the mountain range. I had wondered aloud to Ulrich if there were any plans to sign an alliance contract with them but he just nodded along as the old man always did. It was whatever. General frustration with the company and the life. I was getting used to it.

    "Dropping ball drones." I warned, punching a few buttons to open the hatches on the bottom of the plane.

    A few holoscreens flickered to life as the drones came online and began searching the road with infrared for any more hostiles.

    None. Nothing.

    "Can't see a problem, 78. Hold position and await the convoy to catch up with you," I said.

    The Barit farm boy sounded disgruntled.

    "Holding position."

    I leaned back in my chair in the console and called up to the front of the terminals to Taina.

    "Hey, you think they thought we were commies?"

    She grinned closing a few screens.

    "Yeah, why?"

    I shrugged.

    "Just seems like a waste."

    "Stop thinking poor, Jakk."

    ***

    Two weeks later we were chilling in a small cafe outside of the laboratory corporate perimeter drinking chai bubble teas and watching an old man in a straw hat weave a basket across the closed lane. Jin was inside ordering a plate of biscuits and Taina and I were watching the sun list lazily into the afternoon sky with a certain degree of disinterest. Aside from the intiial contacts with the Regency loyalists which had been reported to a local Brissian ambassador, nothing much was happening in the place known as Sabitoni. It was just lazy afternoon after lazy afternoon and I kept wondering what had been deemed so important about the Erisman box and Rider's allegations that the VH were making tests on it. I wondered why it was deemed important and why the damn thing had been worth so many lives and so much time spent running to patch up leaked information anyways. It was all fruked I supposed.

    "Order's up," said Jin as she came outside with a box, her jacket tied around her waist and a blue tank top on her tanned torso.

    Taina grinned.

    "Hells yeah." she said as she took the box from her and opened it up.

    I looked up at Jin, and I could tell she could see the boredom on my face.

    "You good?" she said reaching for a biscuit before taking a bite.

    I nodded and looked up the street at an ancient cab that was getting it's tire fixed. Techno jazz played from somewhere.

    I spoke up.

    "How's our great scientist?" I asked.

    "Still trucking away at the thing."

    I smiled.

    "Y'know, Rider was a lot more dire about this than the sitution seems."

    I shrugged and reached in the box. The biscuit was buttered and seasoned with a particular herb I would only have if I were craving chips and dip so I supposed it was a nice time to try it because that was all I had been craving since we landed. I wasn't entirely sure why but I guess it was probably the fact we were set to be watching the area and watching an area usually meant sport and sport meant chips and dip. But that was just my reasoning. Honestly I felt like it was late in the third period of a hyperball game and we were tied with a player about to make a breakaway move for the endzone but that was just a hunch.

    My hunches however had been deadly accurate in the past.

    Jin continued.

    "Like, he made it seem like it was some big destablizing thing."

    I shrugged.

    "Well," Taina said. "The VH hack did say that Hifflon Corp had tested the thing in the days prior to the Gaemiria Uprising."

    I rubbed the back of my crop topped head in the shade and remembered a few frantic chats with Deronium during the crisis nearly seven years before. He kept saying he was onto something but I knew the Vannies were always saying that since the Wars and the Wars were more like a series of sporadic militia raids into neighboring city states that had been repeatedly put down by corps and C-Fed forces to keep the whole situation from getting out of hand. I guess that was the cause of the Noble Lady Katra V'Halsen when her power had begun to grow too cemented in the minds of the Durik people. Hells, even I had gotten caught up in it at times because it meant that she would allot more funds for the underclasses of the City State but each time those funds fell through because of people like Deronium and me being hired by the Committee for Unification to allocate funds for them. Nothing seemed to change even now and I felt a burn on the back of my neck near my USB jack making me wonder how neurally damaging some of the VR runs we had taken had been.

    "He said something about that," I chimed in.

    "Who?" Jin asked.

    "Deronium." I said.

    The table got quiet as the dead hacker's name was brought up.

    We had all three known him. He was more like a misguided older brother who got caught up in too many fools' errands and false crusades for riser rats like us but he like a lot of people tied to the VH Wars, even marginally like myself, felt like we had been used or pulled into just that. Fools errands. I figured that's why we were contractors, mercs if you will, because we had been deemed valuable and then taught to be more loyal to the corporate credit than a shimmery political ideal. I could see where Deronium would have thought us to be idealistic traitors but he had always been more loyal to truth than to any specific ideology that a House of Lords politician could churn out for her constituents.

    Fruk, maybe that was just my point of view and I was just getting tired of the life already.

    "Did he say that's what the militia was after?"

    I shook my head. "The Gaemiria Uprising was framed by riots and a VHM battalion infiltrating several schools, hostels and government tennements in the main sector of the city state but he had only said he had information on the massacre but never what had caused it."

    "But we got the Upload right?"

    "We have parts of it, and half of it is C-Fed contact reports and the other half is software. We're no closer to learning what it was about." I said, dreading the next question as we had been ignoring the results of the run for our main missions for so long. "If those contact reports are to be believed the corp funded areas were the hardest hit by the hostilities and we don't have any record of what Hifflon was doing other than a few crowd control device tests like microwave emmitters and civilian model EMP grenades."

    "Didn't they use that stuff, like right off the rack?" Taina said as she leaned back in her chair, a puzzled expression on her face. "The aqquisition receipt section me and Jerri found had it all I think."

    I shook my head more in disbelief than any real disagreement. "I dunno. They were batoning down the hatches, that's for sure."

    "Then it was dimensional tests." said Jin. "That caused that massive amount of people to go nuts."

    "A few things coincided with that," I said. "A lot of the techies from the VHM were economically tied up with Gaemiria and I can totally believe that they exasperated the situation at that stage in the game."

    Taina frowned. "Think that's what occurred before we left?"

    "I hope not. That seemed to be more societal pressured than any damn test would cause."

    Jin put her hands in the pockets of her coveralls and watched the old man walk off with his finished basket for the market further in town. He waved at a razor wire checkpoint down the street and an automated turret whirred onto him as he approached.

    "Maybe," Jin said. "I mean we were doing these runs before we picked you guys up."

    "For artifacts?" I asked, watching the old man get patted down.

    "Yeah, that's why I got into the business. My father didn't support the treasure hunting plan I had after school but Ulrich seemed to have it planned. Met him at a club in the UE sector and we got to talking but he didn't let on about why we were picking this shit up ever."

    I looked down.

    "What?" she asked.

    "Why were we brought in? Like, how?"

    Jin smiled. "Doctors are kind to old friends, let's say that."

    De'Ferrone's inquiry nearly two years before about needler drugs came to mind and I wished I hadn't have gotten refered to her by the Shogun's med team. But it brought me to Jin which had been my objective in the first place althought I knew good ol' Don M hadn't have known what was going on in the first place. "Did the Shogun know?"

    She nodded.

    "He wanted you out of the way, Jakk. Too much heat came down on the Blue Katana zones to make you sticking around safe. And to be fair to BSI, you've been kept in a different sphere of influence for most of the run and the heat's been laid off now you have a legit job."

    I sighed looking in the direction of a jungle bird that had landed it's bright green mass on the railing above our car across the street.

    "You're right."

    I felt bitter.

    "Stop sniffing around so much and we'll be fine."

    Her comment made the bitterness worse.

    "Really?" I began but our comm links piped up just then.

    "Guys it's Mell," came the call. "We're moving out soon. There's some complications with the local chieftans and Harom wants to leave."

    "Like what?" asked Taina.

    "A few disturbing deaths in the old warrior cadres. I don't know why but they don't either. They're mostly blaming us for it."

    A trace of Deronium's upload about sudden deaths resembling exsanguination in Gaemirian apartments came to mind. Hate is being misplaced, he had said to me at the time leading up to his death. He had left me with the phrase, Hate always brings horrors.

    I didn't want any of that.

    "We'll be there soon." I said as I stood up.

CHAPTER 18

    Again.

    Again. And again there was nothing to do.

    So we waited.

    Jin blew me our last kiss.

    Hades chased me to sleep.

    Nadia met me in my dreams.

    Mint chocolate met my lips. We were sitting on the veranda with a perfect form eating mint chocolate chip ice cream.lds The record player her family had handed down for generations had swallowed itself. The sky was on fire and we didn't care. We held each other, the minted taste still fresh on our lips. The ground shook. But we didn't care. We whispered to each other. We didn't care.

    It may come again I thought I heard her say.

    We didn't care.

    Blood fell from the skies.

    We didn't care because it was ripe fruit.

    The dream made sense.

    But why did we not communicate properly.

    She didn't care.

    Neither did I.

    Collusion and misteps taunted us both.

    A haunting spell fell over the night sky as the sun sank to the ground again.

    I awoke thinking, damn that woman.

    I prayed for a savior.