Chapter 59: Gambling

  “Many think of battle as a very big gamble. Who knows what stray round is going to get you, what xeno will pop out of nowhere, who’s going to bite the bullet because of this and that…

  Morons. Absolute fucking morons think that.”

  –Professor of military tactics Gregory Rolland, New-Montreal University, 2045.

  ***

  I checked myself over in the screen I’d just made reflective on the APC.

  Your aesthetics are adequate for this mission, there is no need to preen this much.

  “Yes there is! I’m gonna be on camera!” I’d finally settled on a look for myself. Pants were a non-starter with my god damn tail, but at least my armor did the job and looked awesome while it was at it! Also, yeah, my ass looked amazing in contoured slats of armour…

  My hair had a bit of length, enough to be slicked back or left messy –they could get sexy messy these days, yeah!--. I’d bought protector-made hair implants, which replaced my hair with synthetic strands that could change color, lengthen and shorten, etc... No going bald for me! Suck it dad!

  It was now vivid blood red, but switched to more classic red-panda style red when I wasn’t intimidating people. In the same vein, my eyes had black sclera and bright red irises, which were slightly back-lit. The sclera returned to normal for friends, but the irises stayed. I loved how they looked.

  I wore a very, very old-school looking leather motorcycle jacket, which even came with some scuffs and scratches in the same spots as the old one I lost in the incursion. I’d almost cried after seeing it for the first time. The old one had been my dad’s jacket, which apparently came from my grandpa. This one fit my contours like a glove and was made to shift when I had to get serious. It could actually fold ridiculously small and store itself in my ammo compartment, fucking wild.

  No facial hair since I liked having a bit of a feminine edge to my looks. The jacket didn’t hide my slight hourglass, but somehow enhanced it in some fashion way I could never understand.

  I wiggled my ears, the extremely intricate metal slats still moved with fluid, very lifelike motions. They looked… alive. Difficult to achieve with damascus-steel alloy glowing red at the back, a bit white on the edges and oddly pure black in the center. My head was shaved up to about half the width of my ears since, well, they were fucking wide!

  My leather jacket didn’t hinder my tail much, which I kept fully metal for the moment. It looked more dangerous that way. That coat also had a kevlar and carbon-nanotube lining, just as a little extra.

  I will open this door right now if you do not stop.

  “Alright, alright!”

  “I think you look very sexy.” Robin said over shared comms. The operation required me, Jackal and Johnny to hit three targets simultaneously, so shared comms was non-negotiable. Also, I would need Robin’s guidance for the stream stuff. His only piece of advice so far? Forget there’s a camera there since I’d suck at acting way too much to pull off a script or prepare whatever.

  “Thank you darling, you look more beautiful every day I wake up next to you, love.”

  “For fuck’s sake stop the grab-ass! I’m ready to kill some corpos you cunt, let’s mother fucking go!” Ok, now I had Jackal and Altany on my ass to start this shit.

  “Fine! Fine, starting the stream in three… two… one…” I took a deep breath and checked the chat and stats in the corner of my vision. We had quite the viewership! For such a clickbait sounding title, that impressed me! My stealth drone filmed in glorious 8k, showing my awesome looking self!

  Hey, I didn’t get to be all sexy’d up before, I had the right to enjoy it for once…

  Then Altany rolled in with, what, 800 points’ worth of hacking gear and started neutralizing bots and duplicates. Essentially? A tac-nuke for a couple spiders –a perfectly proportional response–. In the end, we had a couple thousand real people… ninety-eight percent residing in Peach-Trees. Oh well, we’d probably get a lot more when the action got started. I’d engaged my coprocessor to give me more time to think, but Robin’s advice came back to me and I just smiled.

  “Heya chat, thought you sick fucks would like this kind of shit, let’s go have some fun!” Then, I opened the door. We were of course recording all the while, ready to upload so god damn many clips online! I hoped it didn’t turn into a meme machine…

  Fuck, I just guaranteed it would happen, god damn it…

  I stepped out to look at a couple terrified security personnel. They didn’t notice the APC before it unstealthed. “Yo! Fuck off.” My tone fluctuated at high speed between jovial and threatening.

  “Y-y-you hum… T-this is private property! You fuck off!” One of the older, more veteran members guarding the entrance said.

  “Buddy, I already hacked your network, those calls for assistance are going nowhere.” He froze. “There is no conceivable way for you to stop me. I suggest fucking off before you’re an obstruction.” My tone, as casual as possible, still promised unstoppable force to the extremely moveable object.

  “W-what hum… Are you going to kill us?”

  I looked at him askance, then before he could react in the slightest, my Grave Digger pointed at his face while my other hand ripped away the rifle he held too loosely out of terror. I spent a couple seconds just pointing my gun at his head. “If I wanted you dead, you’d be dead. You’re a slave to these fucks, they spend your lives like candy, they use and abuse you as much as possible. I’m guessing you’re covered in scars you can blame on them, am I wrong?”

  Slowly, with extreme care, the man shook his head, an expression I couldn’t interpret on his face. “Now, buddy, just fuck off. It’s alright. I’m not planning on killing anyone other than the cunts responsible. Your friends are safe from me unless they do something insanely stupid, but even then I’m not a fan of going lethal. Send them a message to stand down, I’ll allow it.” Again, very slowly, the guy nodded, but he did not tremble. Good man.

  I saw the message he sent. Altany detected no cypher or codeword, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there. Then, he and his three other door guard friends stepped out of the way. Behind me, Lila, Francis, Synthia, Akira, Alex and Jean-Pierre disembarked. Jean-Pierre had upgraded that shield of his with multiple layers, nano-grain alloys, ablative plates and on and on! The thing beat the ever living shit out of my shield, but mine could fold around my wrist.

  He’d also upgraded to a much more powerful, faster shotgun who’s stock attached to his arm to allow for full length yet still one handed control. His new armor also had a bunch of protection!

  Along with my squad, I marched down the emptying corridors, people doing everything they possibly could to get out of the way, even climbing desks and jumping over stair railings! I’d made sure to keep every single bit of data out of the C-suite’s awareness, including their personal security.

  So, when I heard them arguing from behind a thick wooden door, I actually paused out of interest. “Oh.” I pronounced eloquently after noticing the nine K viewer counter!

  Your speech to the door guard apparently went over well with viewers. Only sixty percent of viewers reside in Peach-Trees at the moment. It is still very early, I expect viewership to climb exponentially. Mostly with the application of violence.

  I refocused on what my ears picked up from behind the door. “... told us a dozen times!”

  “That’s because I fucking told you so! You have any clue how many troops we lost? Trained, well equipped troops! They were stripped and their gear was stolen, by the way.”

  “Shit, that’s a lot of gear… Half the fucking cost of this op was all that anti-armor shit that did jack shit to that monster…” Oh, perfect dramatic timing!

  I kicked the locked door in, creating as wide an area as I could with my foot to avoid getting embedded. It might not have been my first time…

  “Monster?” I asked loudly. Their personal security, twitchy as fuck but not numerous, started moving. My helmet, already halfway assembled, snapped shut and I started disarming them. Literally, that is, with shredder slugs. Worked great!

  It didn’t take long before I’d neutralized all of them. My enforcers weren’t even needed all that much. The large conference room held fourteen ‘important’ people. Two commanders, eight execs and four shareholders. The long mahogany table was surrounded by a small legion of standing aids, now cowering under my gaze. That, I didn’t like. “Everyone but them, fuck off.” The exodus was quick and panicked.

  “Alright, let’s have a chat.” I said, almost sitting on the table. Didn’t think it could handle my upgraded weight.

  “What would that chat be about?” One of the shareholders asked with pure derision and contempt in his voice.

  “Altany, could you please give me a deck of cards?”

  Of course, any brand preference in terms of handling?

  “Bycicle-like.” A single point disappeared and I held Mad Panda themed cards. Fuck’s sake... I didn’t want to be an asshole about it though because, to be honest, they looked really cool! The art was fucking great oddly enough, straddling the line between anime and realistic depictions of furry-bent face-cards. Whatever…

  The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

  “So, you guys sent a small army after me.” I said, simply and succinctly.

  “Subcontractors. We cannot be held liable for a second objective our…” I didn’t let pompous finish.

  “Don’t care. Illegal bounty on a samurai, you wanted a piece and mister Kevin offered to also pay for expanses, so no lose-scenario in your heads. All you’d lose would be replaceable pawns.” I started shuffling the deck. I’d learned young from my mom, got pretty good at it too! I’d done some card magic for a bit, but not much. My gauntlets retracted to handle the deck easier.

  My helmet had already retracted, in part for psychological impact. I looked the fucker straight in the eyes. “Am I wrong?”

  Immediately, the moron blustered. “If you think you can threaten us into anything, you’ll be sorely surprised! We’ve worked with samurai on and off the field, our political reach is…”

  “I’m not here to threaten you.” That stopped him in his tracks.

  “I… You’re not?”

  “Oh, dear god no! The deck of cards would be superfluous otherwise. I’m just here to explain.”

  He returned to glaring. “Explain what? You have no legal right to…”

  *boom*

  In the end, a shotgun slug to the mouth from my Grave Digger did wonders for shutting somebody up. “Anyone else feels like talking?” Lots of headshakes. Good. Shareholders were the highest authority in a company, and I’d shown myself to be very unconcerned with flat-lining one of them. “Shame, would’ve loved some back and forth. Well, with someone that wasn’t a massive gaping asshole.”

  The cards made a ‘frrrrrrr’ sound as I arched the deck during my shuffle. I just kept mixing them up while talking, working with my hands feeling oddly soothing.

  “So, explanation. See, there’s a common saying that most non-idiots follow; ‘don’t fuck with samurais’. You’re all smart enough to know how stupidly dangerous we are, or at least as a whole. For some reason however, you thought that the risk wouldn’t be to you, it’d be to your men.” My teeth clenched in anger, the simple notion enraging me on a deep, personnel level.

  “You knew. You knew some of them would for sure die. You knew that this would sacrifice a ton of them, but from what I can tell after hacking all your servers, you forced them to do this job. Threatened their salaries, getting fired, demotions, even their friends on a few occasion.” I looked straight into one of the commander’s eyes. “Your own fucking people, forced into a meat grinder. Anything to say for yourself?”

  The commander kept his mouth shut, but an exec wasn’t anywhere near as smart. “It’s their job, what we pay them for!” I turned to her.

  “You pay them to commit suicide by samurai?” That shut her up.

  I turned back to the commander. “You were in a militia right? Would you have done that to your team? They were under your command. Those men and women were your responsibility! Yet, you threw them at me, because some piece of shit dangled some credits in front of you.” I felt white hot fury in the pit of my stomach.

  I was in command. I knew the fucking feeling of losing people that were my responsibility, people that fucking trusted me! People that trusted that I wouldn’t leave their families to starve! By extension, they trusted me with every-fucking-thing that fucking mattered to them!

  That trust was mother fucking sacred, and I would not abide sacrilege…

  The military folk had the decency to look ashamed, including a couple execs, surprisingly enough. I decided to pivot. “You know, samurai are all very different. Fucking with one of them, that’s already suicidally stupid, but the question is, how stupid?”

  I turned to the absolutely giant screen covering one wall and my augs hacked into it almost by accident! “See, there’s the righteous type, like Johnny! Hey, Johnny, you ready for your bit?”

  “Yup.”In response, a boardroom with fewer members appeared. There was a lot of shouting and posturing. Johnny ignored all of them, four enforcers at his back just in case. He raised the volume, becoming the loudest and gaining everyone’s attention. “All yall’ve been found guilty of a staggerin’ number of crimes, from coercion to commit a crime to negligent homicide, although I don’t know how negligent it is when you force someone to commit suicide by samurai. Adding all the other crimes I found in yall’s archives and many more I ain’t capable of provin’ a hundred percent, I decided on placement.”

  That shut everybody up, but one of them dutifully asked the important question. “Placement?”

  The sound of eight revolvers being emptied back to back in less than two seconds answered, and in the silence that followed, all anybody heard before the screaming started, was Johnny’s voice. “Shot placement.”

  Then, he walked off. Out of the eight members of that boardroom, four were still alive, for now. I could see the bullet wounds at knees and elbows, even one in the stomach. Extremely painful death for that last one. Hard to say what kind of horrible shit got Johnny to go this cruel, but I could guess.

  “Alright, so that’s type number one. For type two, how you doing Jackal?”

  The screen switched and I almost puked. The screaming was constant and overwhelming. “Sorry Panda, started a bit early. Not done yet though.” There was blood everywhere! A couple guys were cradling their…

  “Hum… Jackal, is that…?”

  “Hey, you gotta deliver on your threats sometimes! If you don’t, people won’t take– Come back here you little cunt! Not done with you yet…” I closed the tv, which had been showing a whole fuckload of blood, some viscera and chopped off… Nop. I officially decided to repress the memory of that room.

  Fuck’s sake, even the cieling had– Nop! Nop nop nop. Big bucket of nop.

  The people in my room looked quite a lot more terrified. “Yeah, there’s also that type. Aren’t you happy I’m the one you got?” I said with a savage smile. “Oh, almost forgot, who did you get Laser Jack?”

  In answer, the tv switched to an exterior view of some small building on the edge of the city. I understood why Laser Jack requested this one when a goat fucking laser the width of that exact building came straight down from the sky and vaporized the top six floors in seconds! I had to imagine the rest of it was on fire. Laser Jack only commented with one name. “Deus Ex.”

  “Well, fuck… What were those guys called again?” I asked, knowing the answer.

  “No idea, their existence was purged from the net.”

  “Okay, thanks for the help!” I said, cutting the connection. I let the stunned silence go for a bit.

  “So, you guys gambled with a fuckload more than the underlings you don’t seem to give a fuck about. In this case, you got me instead of those other three.” I’d been shuffling the deck non-stop, the activity quite calming. “You got lucky, or unlucky depending on how this goes, that I wanted to make a statement.”

  I tossed a card at everybody, face down. “Turn it over.” My voice had dropped from irreverent and humorous straight down to cold and lethal.

  “You… want us to turn the card over?” One of the execs asked, clearly confused.

  “Yes.”

  “And if we don’t?”

  “I’ll kill you. Every fucking one of you earned it, I’m just determining how much revenge on behalf of your men I’m getting.”

  “T-This is absurd, I won’t…!”

  *Boom*

  Another one bit the dust. “Turn it over.” There was no joy or anger in my voice, just cold fury.

  They all did, except one. “Just do it…” It was the ‘I told you so’ guy. I could see it in his eyes, the burden, the responsibility, the failure he felt.

  My voice softened as I answered. “Okay. Turn it over.”

  Defeated, resigned, he did as I asked. Queen of spades. “Alright.”

  My handgun roared seven times, leaving only five alive from the original fourteen. A few terrified execs and mister ‘I told you so’. Everyone with a face card lived. The execs had pissed themselves, which I could understand. “Remember for next time; Don’t fuck with samurais.”

  My job done, I got up and headed for the door. The military man, confused, asked an interesting question. “Wait, why… What was the system?”

  I turned to him, a sad smile on my face. “Whoever didn’t match the only one that understood.”

  Then, I walked off, with two million people watching.

  ***

  Dextersdungeon: Fuck yeah! Make a stew from their corpses! Eat the rich baby!

  Blamglam: Who the fuck was that? I missed the first part, shit…

  Machinegundildo: Mad Panda, don’t worry, there’s a link to a full video: Killing Corpos and looking good doin’ it!

  Hannibalthepusscannibal: Jesus fuck, who was that Jackal chick? Looks hot.

  Blamglam: You have issues.

  Machinegundildo: All samurais, I think Jackal’s operating in NM these days?

  PunkPussy: Oh man, I think I was near that battle! So many hypersonic cracks, can’t believe that guy survived all that shit!

  Machinegundildo: Samurais man, samurais.

  PunkPussy: Girl* TYVM. Can’t believe I never heard of him…

  BlamGlam: Makes sense, some of them don’t go for the super public stuff, you know?

  PunkPussy: Well, that guy does now. Any idea what his thing is?

  Hannibalthepusscannibal: I think shotguns? Although he has a lot of melee shit in the memes… Maybe CQB?

  Mohawcutie: Close Quarters for combat and cute guys!

  PunkPussy: He’s gay? Fuck yeah!

  Mohawcutie: I know right?

  Hannibalthepusscannibal: He’s gay? Well, that’s gay.

  Dextersdungeon: He’s a real punk, gotta love it. Our type doesn’t become samurai anywhere near enough! Whish there were enough to fix/burn down the fucking system…

  Mohawcutie: Well, good thing he scared the fuck out of them! Less likely to go after newbie samurais, we need every fucking one we can get…

  PunkPussy: That’s what it was about?

  Mohawcutie: Well, there was also the abused kid his sister got custody of. Corpo fucker won’t give him up, so he hired those assholes to kill him and his sister.

  RubberRambler: WTF!?!?

  PunkytheClown: Classic corpo cunt...

  JavelinJoker: Fuck him the fuck up Mad Panda!!!

  PunkyBrewster: Revenge is approved, launch!

  Dextersdungeon: Damn, hope he streams that shit too!

  PunkPussy: Seriously!? Oh man, wish I could help somehow…