It didn't take long for the rest of the team to show up at the Shack. Everyone was wearing their game faces, armored and ready. Once we were all gathered, Kaytlyn, who had definitely been spearheading this revenge or justice effort to drive the Wraiths out of the Night City area, got everyone's attention.
"Since our fearless leader has been busy making the space-time continuum cry, I took over the majority of the planning for this raid," She explained, most of us nodding while I fought back a wince. "So, our next target is a strip of tunnel not far from here. It used to be an old abandoned mine, but sometime in the last few years, the Wraiths have set up shop."
Her eyes glowed as she sent out information, my keyphone buzzing in one of my pouches. After pulling it out to check out the information packet, I could see that it was a basic wireframe outline of a tunnel that ran through the low edges of the hills, several miles away from Rocky Ridge. It wasn't exactly our backyard, but it was a lot closer than I expected.
"That's closer than I thought," I said with a frown. "How have these guys not been a problem before?"
"Because, while most of the Wraith bases around Night City would be more than happy to start a fight, this is a major contraband shipping and receiving center. Basically, Raffen Shiv groups drop stuff off here, they get paid, and then it gets smuggled into the Night City. Glitter, illegal cyberware and weapons, information, cars, and even people sometimes. Basically, this is the one place they run where they don't want any attention."
"How much ground are we going to need to cover?" Jackie asked, his eyes glowing as he reviewed the information. "You said this was a mine? Those can get pretty big, right?"
"It was, but the lower levels were purposely collapsed a long time ago when the mines ran dry, and Night City was concerned about it being turned into a haven for... well, shit like this," Kaytlyn explained. "Only the top tunnel remains, plus a few short offshoots, barely more than side rooms."
I noticed the offshoots she was mentioning, scrolling through my keyphone as Kaytlyn continued.
"The most important aspect we need to remember is that this place is a lot more likely to call out for help," She pointed out. "This isn't just party joint or hang out. This is a major money-making location for the Wraiths. If we let them, they will call for reinforcements, and while we could probably handle them, it would ruin the mind game aspect of our missions.
"So… stealth?" Jackie asked with a frown. "Not exactly my skillset."
"It's not any of ours besides you, Kayt," I pointed out. "What about speed? Hit them fast enough so they can't call out?"
"Not without knowing how many people are waiting," Riggs responded, shaking his head. "Ten people? Sure, we could handle that before anyone has time to think. But twenty? Thirty? Can't make any assumptions. Especially not with this much space to cover."
"So stealth is our only option," I concluded, both Kayt and Riggs nodding in confirmation. "Well, all our weapons save Rigg's mag cannon have a silent mode, and we have one cloaking rig someone can use. Actually… we should all switch to a mag rifle. Their silent mode has the most impact, and it will give us an advantage for distance. Spraying and praying or mag dumping while trying to be silent is counterproductive."
"Agreed, save for me since I'll be wearing the rig and acting as the scout," Kaytlyn corrected. "I'll be in the lead, we will slowly push into the main room. Once that is clear, we can push out the opposite side. Then, depending on how the first half went, we either spend some time cleaning them out of anything useful or valuable or just burn it all to the ground as quickly as possible."
"And the intimidation?" I asked.
"I'm thinking we will run a repeat of last time, only in reverse," Kaytlyn said. "MRVN units will tear up the cybernetics but leave the bodies behind."
We talked a bit more about the plan before finally leaving the Shack, our faces set and determined. We quickly hopped into several vehicles, mainly the civilian and company trucks, making sure to have as much cargo space as possible. After one final check for gear, we headed out, crossing the desert at a modest but safe pace, ignoring the roads.
It took nearly an hour to arrive near our destination, at which point we disembarked and headed out to cover the remaining distance on foot. Jackie, Riggs, and I all stopped before we reached the cave entrance while Kaytlyn continued on. Riggs was clearly not the biggest fan of that, and I didn't blame him at all. Sending someone off alone, even when they were invisible, was just asking for trouble.
About five minutes after she left, Kayt sent a series of clicks to us, signaling us to approach slowly, as there were still threats. We all but crawled to the entrance, eventually cresting a small cliff. Below us was a single dirt road, which cut into the mountain to our left, creating a small rocky valley of sorts until the road disappeared into the hillside. There, parked along the road, were a pair of cars, both marked with Wraith colors. Around them stood four people, armed and looking down the road, clearly on watch, waiting for trouble.
Kaytlyn sent another clicking signal, and all three of us raised our weapons and sighted our targets in, waiting for a moment before the Wraith closest to the tunnel dropped, his head nearly decapitated as Kaytlyn cut his throat, an odd sight considering we couldn't actually see our friend. Before he had even finished crumpling to the ground, all three of us on the hill opened fire, a burst of nearly silent metal slugs punching through all three remaining Wraiths, blowing chunks out of their bodies.
For a moment, we all paused, waiting for an alarm or a burst of action that would mean we missed something or someone had spotted us before we spotted them. When nothing happened, those of us who needed to breathe let out the breaths we were holding. A moment later, we all jumped down to join Kaytlyn, who faded into view as we dropped.
A couple of simple hand signals later, we were pushing into the cave, our lights off, relying on the night vision built into our helmets to illuminate the dark spots of the underground tunnel. Every so often, we passed a support pillar, a good chunk of steel built with hydraulics and machinery, though most of it looked rusted or fused from lack of oil and maintenance. All along the walls were wires and cables, as well as old reinforcing metalwork, most of which hung uselessly, though judging by the occasional light, at least a few of the wires were still live.
We were walking for only a few minutes, taking each step slowly, before Kaytlyn clicked another warning. All of us dropped low, sliding out of the harsh lights and into the shadows along the tunnel walls, our pace reduced even further. Sure enough, just around a corner was another group of Wraiths. In a slight outward bulge of the tunnel was a pair of cars, one of which was hauled up on a pair of simple trunk jacks. They were parked along the wall, with a few lights illuminating them and the area around them. There were also several shelves and crates filled with parts, as well as a few toolboxes.
Around the cobbled-together garage was a trio of Wraiths. One of them was looking under the hood of a vehicle, while another was sitting in the passenger seat of the same car, working on its interior. The third Wraith was partially concealed by the raised vehicle, his upper torso under the car as he worked on it from underneath.
As Riggs and I peaked around the corner, me crouching down and the larger AI standing above me, Kaytlyn gave us another series of clicks. Once again, we waited for her signal, which this time was her firing three shots into the Wraith sitting in the passenger seat. Riggs and I opened fire a split second later, taking down the two others. As we approached, Kayt once again decloaked, double-tapping all three Wraiths as she worked her way out of the garage.
Again, we pushed forward, this time stopping almost immediately as we ran into some sort of patrol. They were probably moving out to the garage or even past them to the entrance. Rather than signaling for us, Kaytlyn simply drove her knife into the back of one of their skulls, up and into the brain, before firing another trio of slugs into the other one's back. Jackie and I dragged the corpses into the darkness that hung around the cave walls.
Unfortunately, even if Kayt managed to take them down silently, active patrols were still a bad sign, as it meant they might expect people to return and change out for a break or a shift. That meant we were officially on a timer, with who knows how much time left on it.
As we walked deeper into the retired mine, we had to take down two more patrols, another pair, and a trio. The pair was clean, with Riggs and I dropping them while Kaytlyn kept an eye out for anyone else. The trio, however, almost went south. As Jackie and Riggs took down their targets, Kaytlyn attempted to slice the spine and throat of the third. Instead of flesh and blood, her attack failed, revealing an armored bit of chrome that resisted her blade.
Thankfully, Kaytlyn was far from an amateur, and even as her blade did nothing, she had clamped down on his throat, giving her just enough time to draw her pistol and unload into his side. Again, this all looked incredibly strange, as she was invisible as she did this. Still, it was easy to see that something had gone wrong, and for a moment we all froze, wondering just how screwed we were. It was only after she finally clicked out an all-clear that we all relaxed.
Our next challenge was a doozy, as it was the main chamber. It was a partial crossroads between the main tunnel and a collapsed branch, but according to the data that Kayt shared with us earlier, it also had a few infrastructure buildings. It was also the most open area in the tunnel, the crossroads widened to create a staging area of sorts.
All this meant that it was likely where a majority of the Wraiths would be, with who knew what kind of defenses. Even worse, it wasn't like we could drop our stealth and blitz the final group because while most of the remaining Wraiths were likely to be here, there was still the "exit" side of the tunnel, which would likely have its own patrols and lookouts. We couldn't go loud without alerting them.
So, what we were left with was a large concentration of chromed-up psychos, all stuck around one area, which we needed to kill silently without alerting any of the other psychos.
Not exactly a walk in the park.
The process started with Kaytyn killing a single Wraith as he leaned against the tunnel wall, having smoke. He was just outside the main hub but far enough around the corner that he could be taken down without being seen. Kaytlyn stabbed him in the heart, followed by the head, the man dying before he even really knew what was going on. She carefully dragged him away, passing the corpse to Riggs, who carried it away even further.
With a small cut punched into their perimeter, we could now get a good solid look at just what the hub/crossroads looked like. There were two main structures, both of which were on top of catwalks on opposite sides of the hub. One, the structure to our left, was a stand-alone unit that was probably some sort of overseer's office. The one to our right was built on what appeared to be a security gate of some kind, with a catwalk that rose up and over the road further into the mine.
It was clear that the Wraiths intended this place to be secure, as there were concrete barriers set up for coverer, as well as a few heavy weapon emplacements set up to sweep over the exit and entrance tunnels. There were also several patrols moving around, constantly passing by dark places and other spots. If we were going to do this, we would have to get it perfect, or the whole thing would fall apart.
Slowly, we pushed forward, taking cover behind two large shipping containers. We waited silently in cover until a pair of Wraiths came around the corner. Before they could even see us, Riggs and I grabbed them, hands around their throats as we cut them deep. It was brutal, stabbing away at someone, but I knew these people were barely better than Scavs and would gladly murder innocent people for a quick buck.
Once they had stopped twitching, Jackie and a decloaked Kayt dragged away the bodies, before we once again pushed forward, slowly making our way to the structure on our left, the stand-alone structure with the least entry points. Quickly, Kaytlyn vanished, her cloak covering her. She carefully jumped and pulled herself up along a section of the catwalk that was missing a railing system. While she moved, the rest of us took cover as best we could, hiding in the stark shadows cast by harsh lights.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
After a few seconds, Kaytlyn clicked an all-clear, and I quickly followed her, jumping without my jump kit and quickly pulling myself into cover, only pausing for a nearby Wraith to face away from me, tapping the controls of a radio as he adjusted its volume.
When I found Kaytlyn, she was peeking out of the window, a pair of nearly decapitated Wraiths bleeding out on the floor. From this structure, we had a much better view of the entire hub, and since we now "owned" a corner of the room, we could push from one spot to the rest slowly but surely, with me providing almost silent covering fire if something were to go wrong.
After taking a good look at the space from the superior angle, Kaytyn left, leaving me to set up in the relative darkness, weapon at the ready. I watched as Kaytlyn, Riggs, and Jackie methodically swept over the room, stabbing and killing nearly twenty more Wraiths. Perhaps the most impressive kill was when Riggs was forced to deal with a Borg almost as tall as he was without his mag cannon. Instead, he took his plasma sword and waited for the large, chromed-out bastard to turn, flicking the weapon on just long enough to slam it through his chest and drag it out through the side, nearly cutting the borg's torso in half. Kaytlyn was quick to follow up, using her knife to silence him entirely by activating it and punching it through his armored skull.
I continued to keep watch as they slowly made their way up the stairs, using some that were underneath the catwalks, coming up and catching the people inside off guard. Jackie managed to slam his axe into the closest Wraith before tearing it free and blurring as he activated his Sandy, slamming it into the skull of one of the Wraiths standing along the catwalk. Kayt and Riggs leaped forward, Kayt catching one of the three remaining Wraiths with her knife, carving his neck and stabbing his chest. I honestly had no idea she was so good with a knife, but watching her use one made me glad she was on our side.
While Kaytlyn was cutting into her target, Riggs lept after the final two Wraiths. The big brute of an AI was a simple man, and stealth was not his strong suit. Being strong, however, was, and he showed just how much when he wrapped his armored hands around the head of the two raffen shiv and slammed them together, dragging them along, the brutal impact causing their skulls to deform enough that I could see all the way from the other side of the room.
Despite the impressive and brutal takedowns, my three teammates unfortunately missed a pair of Wraith as they walked up the stairs opposite the main structure on the other side of the road. They had just stepped up to the platform as Jackie appeared beside another Wraith, his axe in their skull.
Before they could shout and or scream, and therefore alert everyone down the "exit" of the tunnel, I fired five times, my mag rifle silently sending five slugs whipping across the crossroads. Each of the Wraith dropped, hitting the catwalk, one of them rolled down the stairs. Unfortunately, while I had managed to keep them from shouting out in alarm, between the whipping sound mag rifle slugs made and the very dead Wraith rolling down the metal stairs, the takedown had been far from silent.
Two Wraiths, partially hidden further down the tunnel, stuck their heads in, looking for the source of the unknown noise, while another pair stood up from a table not far from them, several playing cards in their hands. One last man stepped from behind a few crates, only a half dozen feet from Jackie, rubbing his eyes like he was waking up from a nap.
Immediately, I swung my rifle around, firing twice more at the pair stepping in from the tunnel. Two of my shots hit dead center on the first Wraith, while I had to fire twice more to take down the second. Jackie pulled out his pistol and killed the napping shiv before he was even fully awake.
"Wh-!"
Just the barest of sounds managed to escape one of the poker players before his head exploded, his associate already slumping and sliding out of his chair.
We froze, waiting for more noise to rush in, waiting for whoever might have heard the commotion to come running. Kaytlyn, who had dropped her cloak, made a quick gesture to Jackie and Riggs, who quickly made their way off of the catwalk. The tunnel that ran across the main one didn't go deep, but there was room for storage, which needed to be cleared. As Jackie and Riggs pushed into the partially gated-off space, Kaytlyn and I pushed down the "exit" tunnel, running into three patrols but making quick work of them between my backup and Kaytlyn's cloak.
Somehow, by some miracle, we had managed to clear the entire tunnel without alerting anyone. Well, without alerting someone irreparably. Once Kayt and I finished dragging the bodies from the "exit" guard inside the darkness of the tunnel, we headed back to the crossroads to check in with Riggs and Jackie.
As we walked back, I radioed the MRVNs outside to start clearing cars and moving inwards towards the crossroads. They confirmed my orders quickly, so I clipped my radio back to my hip.
"Why don't we have more of these?" Kaytlyn asked, tapping her cloak projector, which was currently off.
"Stealth has never really been our MO," I responded with a shrug. "If you had told me you wanted to do this one quietly, I could have made more, but you seemed determined to do this today. Doesn't matter, though, I'm pretty sure I'm going to have something better from this batch of inspiration. It's going to mean re-making all our armor, but it's going to be absolutely worth it."
If I got access to teleportation, there was no way that the stealth tech from Fallout was not somewhere in the tree. It would be a lengthy process to get to the ultimate iteration of it, be it, the, a, or some other stealth tech I didn't know about, but it was too perfect not to get for our armors, just in case we needed it.
Judging from my experience with this mission, stealth was never going to be our first, second, or third choice, but it would be nice to make it easy on the off chance it was necessary.
As Kayt and I got back to the crossroads, the MRVNs had already arrived, carrying bodies and piling them up in the center of the main room. Jackie and Riggs were already going through crates and boxes, cracking them open to see what sort of stuff the Wraiths were smuggling.
For nearly an hour, we stuffed crates of weapons, supplies, tech, food, cyberware, and more into our trucks, as well as into the spare seats of various Wraith vehicles. Perhaps the most interesting find was a cargo truck, a cyberpunk-looking version of a box truck. It wasn't military surplus or armored or anything, just a moving truck that we crammed absolutely full of anything worth anything. The only thing we didn't take that was worth money was any drugs. While I respected any mentally culpable adult's right to kill themselves with any flavor or variation of chemical, the drug trade was always entangled in less savory crimes, so I had no intent to aid or contribute to it. All the drugs we found were smashed and ruined in the corner of one of the collapse tunnels, finished off with a pair of incendiary grenades, courtesy of the Wraith's own stock.
The last thing we did was order the MRVNs to tear the cyberware out of the main Wraith corpses, which they purposely mangled until they were useless. We left them in separate piles before Kaytlyn decided that there needed to be a bit more. She gave the MRVNs a few more orders, the mindless worker drones continuing to "play" with several of the Wraiths. I don't know what they ended up doing because I did not have the stomach to stick around and watch, but even Jackie left the tunnel looking pale and slightly wobbly.
The trip back to the town was quiet, mostly because we had all split up into different cars to drive as many of them back as possible. Even the ones that the Wraiths had been working on were being driven back by MRVNs. Most of them would end up as scrap, since at the moment that was our biggest drive. We were already buying more trucks to convert into scrap trucks, and I was still nervous about keeping up with our need for steel and other commonly used metals.
I also wanted Samwise to convert the trucks we had stolen tonight into more cargo-capable designs. That way, the MRVNs who went out scavenging could offload the more common material into them rather than dump it to make room for more rare ones. Between the increase in scrappers and transportation, I was hoping we could keep up our soon-to-be sky-rocketing demand.
By the time we got home, those of us who were biological were more than ready for sleep. The stealth aspect of this had kept us on our toes for a lot longer than we were accustomed to, and as a result, we were dead on our feet. Adrenaline could only do so much once everything slowed down. I barely made it to my trailer before I was asleep. Duke joined me in bed for a while, eventually going down to his own bed a few hours later.
The next morning, I woke up to my alarm going off, waking me up a few hours earlier than I would usually. I was pushing my limits in terms of sleep, but I was absolutely determined to get teleportation down by the end of the day. Judging by what I could see in my tech tree, I was hopeful that I was only two or three large creations away from an actual, working, human-safe teleporter. What it would mean, what it would change, and what kind of work I would need to do after it was done was still up for debate.
While I might get access to teleportation in a few creations, that didn't mean I was going to start throwing people through it. Materials, non-AI MRVNs, and drones, sure, but humans weren't getting teleported unless I was satisfied with my understanding of the science behind the tech.
After our morning briefing, I warned Samwise it was going to be a long day. I told him to let Jackie know that any of the cyberware that was under a certain grade could get taken to Vik's and sold for cheap. The lesser stuff was useless to us for anything beyond scrap, and Vik's less fortunate clients could use the cheap gear.
I wanted to store the weapons we gathered in one of our storage trailers since it was a sizable amount. It was enough that, in an emergency, we could drop them somewhere to supply a large group of people with weapons to defend themselves. I wanted Kaytlyn and Riggs to go over the rest of what we got, organize it, and decide what it was worth. Anything worth keeping could be stored away or spread around, while everything else could be sold in bulk through Dakota, preferably, since we were still working on getting the Nomads on our side.
Samwise warned me that we were due a large delivery of medical tech, but Frank was confident that he could handle installing it properly with a few MRVNs. The Biolab was almost ninety percent complete by this point and should be completed by the time I woke up the following day.
My assistant also reported that, as we had discussed, Noah had completed plans for a teleporter room under the garage and that he was ready to begin construction. It was to be heavily reinforced and run off of three of its own large fusion reactors, which should be enough for a pretty consistent teleporting speed. Noah was already working on a real teleport hub in the bunker, so there was no reason to go too crazy with the station built here. It only needed to handle local traffic, after all.
After signing off on Noah's design and giving him the go-ahead to get to work, as long as he didn't interrupt my work, Samwise finished his report, going over the prep and number we had prepared for our vault construction. The additional production room had been working nearly constantly since I decided to prioritize a bunker as our next large-scale project, and we had accumulated a significant amount of ready-to-go infrastructure and tools.
All that was really left was for me to unlock the last pieces of teleportation tech and pick a spot for my vault, which Samwise and Noah were working on finding. I could feel the excitement in my bones, a wired energy running through me. We were so close I could practically taste it. I just needed to knuckle down and get it done.
