We spent the daylight hours lounging underground, each of us taking naps or enjoying some rations while watching a plethora of stupid Night City Vid Programing. Soon a local news program started pying and the major story was quite familiar. It was an interesting experience seeing our work from st night being sensationalized by the news media today. While I was watching one of the reporters chattering nonsense at the Garage scene, a dreadful thought hit me. In the background I could see that the police were thoroughly going over the area, they were performing basic forensic procedures, which in 2074 involved all kinds of scanners.
The blood drained from my face, as I realized we had done nothing to hide our faces from the cameras. Not a problem for Raynor or the boys, but John and I could be screwed. None of us had policed our "brass" or recovered the spent bullets from the bodies. All manner of "evidence" for them to tch onto. Sure, we weren't in their systems so they'd have minimal leads, but I hadn't even thought about the traces we were leaving behind. My ck of forethought could have just burned us good.
It was possible that they already had John's and my face pstered all over the Net. And now they'd be building a file. Everything we had done might be uncovered, no matter how unlikely. If they back tracked our presence in the city... Shit! I took a moment to consider my next steps carefully, then I started doing what little I could to mitigate the damage.
I sent a quick message to Rita, Mateo, Vik and Misty telling them to just cooperate if the NCPD came a calling. They'd be the most likely to try to protect our info, and I didn't want them to catch heat for my fuck up. Next, I sent a message to all avaible Probes to button up all the Night City Outposts by sealing them off completely from the topside. We'd have to expand the tunnels networks to have any freedom of movement around the city and hope the NCPD didn't have retively decent sensors that could easily penetrate the ground deeply enough.
I shifted one of the Robotics Facilities' queue to produce a squad of Probes before returning to pumping out more Sentries. I still wanted to complete the killing quest at least once before we went home. That meant we needed a dedicated digging team to get us to the buildings we had marked yesterday. MY poor little Robo-Buddies were going to have to save the day yet again. And though it was a little too te, I spent an hour designing masks for John and myself in the one of the Forges. Cursing at myself the whole time. It took three tries before I managed to produce a style of mask we could both use without any problems.
This behavior was why I had never gotten around to to hiring anyone to help me back on my original Earth. I was always worried that if I screwed my business up I'd be dragging my employees down with me. Fuck, how could I have been so stupid? I'd really thought I was doing better with pnning out our missions. Then it turns out that accounting for the aftermath of our actions never even crossed my mind.
Now we had to do the rest of our work in the city, like some kind of mole people.
While the Probes were being assembled, I worked on some upgrades for their Particle Beams systems. It helped to calm my nerves. Small and simple adjustments to their crystal focusing matrix allowed for a longer sting beam, and a reordered power distribution cluster increased the output of the beam by around 5%. My brain had spat out the ideas a week ago, but I'd gotten distracted from the implementation stage by the power armor designs. The new Probes were easily updated as they were being built, and soon all of our other Probes would get modified.
While these fresh Probes cked vitality of a Wisp infusion, it hardly mattered for tunnel work, and we could handle getting them infused ter. Right now, they'd started digging with their new stronger beams. Two of them worked on the excavation, while another two followed behind disassembling the debris and adding the small version of Pylons into the walls. Every 400ft they also added a set of two Photon Cannons for those "just in case" situations. The best part is that occasionally throwing Empower Constructs on them sped them up, which increased their workflow dramatically. What should have taken days, merely took hours and we were soon directly under our next target. Ready to hit them, only an hour or so ter than I had initially pnned.
However, we hit a further snag. Within moments of digging upwards, we the humans, had to retreat from horrified revulsion. The Probes had broken into the sewage system. Thankfully, they were undeterred by the foul steaming sludge that started cascading down upon them. Soon enough they had dammed the downward flow and created a workaround for the main sewage line. That redirected flow now allowed us to make further progress towards the surface. Only then did I creep close enough to throw a desperate barrage of Cleanses over the whole area. The smell... blugh.
This unfortunately happened two more times before we were directly under the floor of the metalworks. The building was a combination of a smeltery and manufacturing pnt, that had been confiscated by a gang known as The Fire. They were a group of pyromaniacs that loved to burn anything and everything they could. Sadly, for them, the concrete used in modern construction could withstand incredible temperatures, which meant the crazy little firebugs couldn't practice wide scale arson. So they had taken to burning other Gangs and any random citizens with their vast knowledge of a multitude of incendiary devices. They even had cobbled together their own makeshift versions of fmethrowers.
We had no clue how our shields would match up to burning accelerant. Our first pn was that we were going to move as a group and drown them in suppressing fire, keeping them from getting anywhere close to us. But then we came up with a better pn, unless they saw us come into their base, I was going to let a Probe drop a War Pylon right at the mouth of our entry point. Then they'd never see us coming at all.
There was an Observer hovering far above, which reported only a dozen members of the gang in the building. The rest must have been running around causing trouble. That wasn't really a cause for arm, The Fire was always trying to find new targets for their psycho activities.
The encounter went off without a hitch, the Pylon hide our presence until we were already shooting. Even with the clear indication of an attack, the few survivors didn't have time to react to our sudden assault before we had cut them all down. Once we had cleared the area and collected the data and credit chips off of the Gangoons, I let myself observe the completely automated Metalworks. Even if it was primitive by the standards of the Khai, I found the machinery fascinating, and I actually enjoyed the smell of hot metal.
The smell of burnt human flesh not so much. We found several piles of crisped corpses. Given their condition The Fire hadn't gained anything for these deaths other than whatever sick satisfaction the psychos got from their victims' screams. I really wanted to give those poor souls a proper burial, provide a little comfort and peace to the departed. This could bring some small measure of order to what could only be called insanity. It would have to wait though, until we were sure no more of those pyro assholes still sucked air.
The Probes were scanning everything while throwing the bodies of the gangers into our tunnels where they would ignominiously disassemble them ter. We waited, once again completely hidden by the War Pylon's influence. As the members of the Gang slowly filtered in, in small groups mostly, we simply disposed of them. They never had time to begin to suspect anything was wrong. Then the Probes tossed those banger's remains into the tunnel. After each encounter, I had the Probes recover any spent cartridges while I cast Cleanse to take care of any blood or any other sign we were here.
It was all so easy, so efficient, so mechanical. A part of me was repulsed by this, another part of me celebrated that none of my people were ever in any real danger while still getting to remove these scum. I merely needed to look at the mounds of victims to keep calm and stop feeling any sense of pity or remorse for The Fire gangers. In the end, this wasn't about honor, and it certainly wasn't about being the good guys, it was about exterminating a cancerous growth. A terrible but necessary action.
When we were sure we had gotten as many as we were going to get tonight, we returned to the tunnels and left. The Probes sealed up our entry point behind us and then disposed of the gangers' bodies.
Another unpleasant job well done.
"Sources at NCPD have revealed that The Fire's primary members are all missing. Cameras in the area caught glimpses of a conflict with the unknown gangers in green and blue armor. These same gangers were responsible for eliminating a Maelstrom distro hub the night before. Well, I say good riddance to all of those freaks. I for one, welcome our new, more fashionable gang to Night City. We at the Point Review can't wait to see which creeps they ftline next. Up next, is your neural interface trying to kill you..."
The show's host faded away and the scene morphed into an annoying NiCo commercial. Fuck you, I will not taste the love. Your love tastes like ass.
We were once again rexing in an Outpost, while going over our gear and making pns for tonight's mission. The Probes were expanding the Tunnels to points just below the next two targets. Either one should net me the first completion of the Kill Quest and I'd get to find out what kind of goodies came from a Supply Token.
"How's everybody doing?" I let my voice carry so everyone heard me. I got back a chorus of "Fines" and "Okays" which had me nodding. Their morale seemed to be holding up, and we still had enough rations to push for a couple of more days. More if we could stomach including some of the local fare, into our diets. Some part of me wanted to head home, and screw the quest for now. But all of the reports from Jaina, and messages from Megan, Sally, and Amanda let me know everything was going well in New Lordaeron. New farms were going up, new Footmen were being trained and outfitted. The Smithy, Church and Jaina's Mage Tower were complete or near completion. New homes for the people and new local business had started, like a restaurant, a bakery and a butcher. Many more acres of the Badnds were now new growth forest. It had only been a few days, so I was definitely amazed by the steady progress. New Lordaeron really was coming together into a respectable town now.
Even Meadran was talking again, albeit sparingly. And Faergin had found a location where he wanted to take root for the first time. The new bcksmith had already fitted a restless Korvaith with some steel armor ptes. Alina had obtained some interesting data from the Observers, about several of our projects, and would be sending me the files to review ter today.
My only worry about events there was no one had seen Lumi since before we had left, and I couldn't find him with the Psifield. My gut clenched involuntarily when I thought about it. Yeah, after we took care of these next two groups we'd head back and I'd go looking for him. It was probably just him running around far and wide, but thinking about it set my nerves on edge.
Far in the distance, echoing through the newest sections of tunnels, we heard a bizarre noise. We immediately snapped into combat mode at the unfamiliar sound. We grabbed our weapons and formed up and trying to figure out exactly where the noise was coming from. It didn't take long to determine it was coming specifically from the tunnels leading further to the west. Where the Probes had been digging for tonight's raid. A dozen recently finished Sentries, without prompting, entered those tunnels single file. What was going on?
After a couple more tense minutes we could tell that what we were hearing was a combination of sounds. Some kind of animalistic screeching and the sounds of Photon Cannon, Disruptors and Particle Beams discharging rapidly. After a few more minutes we finally see what had been going on.
A seething mass of pale flesh and metal was advancing slowly through the tunnel, while three Probes and four Sentries were engaged in a fighting retreat. Even as we watched the mass of angry "cyborgs?androids?" overran another Photon Cannon empcement. Many of their bodies were burnt or cored by Khai weapons but those corpses were dragged back into the mass and more fresh bodies were always ready to keep up the pressure.
One of the Sentries threw up one of it's stationary, nearly indestructible shields. The rest of the robots fell back to our position. The Probes beeping frantically.
"Run Executor! Countless Enemies! Relentless! We will dey!" I looked carefully at the things beating furiously on the purple shield of the Sentry. Vaguely human. Their faces, all identical, each one carried the same mask of rage. Yet, every one of them seemed to have different cybernetics, which appeared haphazardly grafted into their pale bodies. No weapons, or armor, not even any clothes. All of them sexless, just a smooth patch of skin were something should be. Very disturbing. Their screams were a mixture of real vocal cords and voice boxes and there was something haunting in the sounds. As if each creature was lost in some kind of digital hell.
The Sentry's shield shattered as I was still trying to analyze this new foe. The beastly thing swarmed the Sentry not just trying but succeeding in damaging the robot with their bare hands. Fuck!
"Back! Back toward the Imperials!" I ordered, trying not show my fear. I figured the Command Bunker should be able to withstand this threat. I don't care how strong these new creatures were they weren't beating their way through several feet of concrete.
We ducked into the tunnels leading to the south east. We began to haul ass, highly motivated to out run the things behind us. The remaining Probes and Sentries went back to keep trying to slow the tide. The screams of the twisted beasts followed us the whole way.
When we arrived near the Charter Hills Outpost we were meet by a squad of Kriegsmen. They immediately recognized me and bowed to me. How did they get them so fast?
"No time for that! Enemies inbound. Setup a defensive position here." I could figure out the detail of the rapid deployment ter. Now I needed a defensive line that the horrid things following us couldn't break.
They voxed the Marshall and we began helping them to set up a choke point. We managed to barricade the tunnel with some kind of metal panels the Kriegsmen had already had nearby. Their current assignment had been to create checkpoints in the tunnels. That was some bloody good timing.
Once we'd gotten everything in pce and I had a moment to breath, I used the Psifield to order all avaible Probes and Sentries to seal off the tunnels leading from the Japantown Outpost to our other locations. They were to use whatever methods they deemed fit to get the job done as fast as possible. We couldn't allow these creepy things to get anywhere near New Lordaeron.
"One side!" We all backed out of the way of a rge field gun of some kind. It looked like a small double barreled howitzer. Even without seeing it perform, I liked it. A lot. I went to the nearby Robotics Facilities to queue up some more Probes, with the goal of scanning that weapon. Also they would help secure the area with further defensive structures.
After the Gun was settled into the barricade we waited while the screams once again grew louder. Two more squads of Kriegsmen approached as well as Marshall 999 and Magos Helifern. Seriously, how did they get all of these soldiers out so fast? I thought the menu said in would take a week to get a squad out. I'm seeing three squad that they has squeezed out in a couple of days. Given that I didn't see either of the Watchmasters, I'd be willing to bet there were other squads, guarding other tunnels. Something was fishy.
"Emperor! What threat approaches?" Marshall 999 asked, saluting as come up beside me. John and Jim watched him and his men like hawks. Helifern stayed back a ways, probably not wanting to appear as a threat, or maybe out of reverence to his Omnissiah.
"Unknown, Marshall. They likely come from further under Night City, They appeared from tunnels that were newly excavated to the west. No weapons or armor, unknown random cybernetics. A seemly endless tide of bodies, full of nothing but rage. They also have no concern for survival." I kept my voice steady. I counted in my head like John had taught me. It could make my outward appearance seem much calmer than it really was.
The Marshall chuckled. "Excellent. If they do not fear death, they shall not run from our guns. A proper foe to crush, and fully dispy our devotion to you, My Emperor!" What the fuck? He was happy that an enemy was coming, I could feel it.
He turned to his men and roared, "Krieg! We Stand! They shall advance no further! Hold this line! For the Emperor!"
His troops were silent, but I could feel their willingness to fight and die. For me. Golden energy burned into me from every Krieg Guardsman, and it felt wonderful.
