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B2 - Chapter 3 – A new ride and the long road
🕑 Added 2024-11-07 15:07:39 +0000 UTCThe four Aspirants exited the portal, and Jace had to cover his ears. The enormous vroom of engines being revved in place was deafening, and the continuous pop-pop of exhaust. Gusts of grey-black exhaust were billowing up into the grey skies above, and the moon far up in the night sky was barely a hazy disc.
“This is El Mencho’s territory,” Greg shouted over the din as he led the group out of the enormous parking lot. The entire area was filled with souped-up vehicles and supercars of all types; trucks, sports cars, even armored corpo vehicles with modifications and symbology all around the exterior in gaudy paint. The most prominent symbol amongst the emblems was a red rose that was bleeding, held by a woman’s dainty hand. “They have a huge car culture. Best place to get a ride in non-corpo territory.”
There were people here tending to the vehicles in a state of revelry. This must be some type of celebration, Jace thought. The further they got from the vehicles, the more the noises of a vibrant city came to the forefront – and on this night, music. The trio kept close behind Greg as the larger man led them through winding city streets – past partially-cybered-up people in all manner of dress.
“There’s way more modification than before,” Jace shouted over the crowd. Thankfully, whilst affected by Dark Matter Cloak, they couldn’t be heard by those not cloaked unless Jace wanted them to be heard.
“I looked that up,” Quinn replied at the same volume level. “Nebula Alliance has been here for a month. They gave a bunch of resources to the megacorps, and they’ve been giving out the tech like candy for payment plans. A lot of people jumped at the chance to improve their bodies with safe tech.” She winced and gripped her temple.
Priam frowned as he tapped her on the back. There was a slight, golden glow that surrounded Quinn, and she seemed to relax. “We’ll find someone here who can fix it up, I’m sure.”
“We’ll probably have to get somewhere else for that,” Greg replied as they left the city proper and entered the outskirts. Several houses made of adobe bricks were set along small plots of land, and Jace could see families in small clearings between houses in what he would call ‘neighborhoods’ reveling with song and dance.
“What holiday is going on?” Jace asked.
Greg smiled, “Dia de la Independcia, their day they got their independence from some ancient kingdom called New Spain along the Americas.”
“You know a lot about this world’s history,” Priam said.
“It’s because I went to a proper school. Good ol’ England – never went full-corpo, thank God.” He chuckled, “I lost all the accent though. It happens when you world travel as much as I did. It’s better to have something…generic.” He pointed at Quinn, “Like her. Even though she’s Australian, I haven’t once heard her speak in that distinct accent.”
Jace chuckled, “She used a word with me when we first met. ‘Slater’. No clue what it means.”
Quinn sighed, “Just…shut up, you all are giving me a headache. Greg, how far do we have to walk to get to this place?”
“It’s over there,” Greg said, pointing at a distant pile of metal and salvage.
“My Cloak needs to drop soon,” Jace said. It’s getting too costly with the group version. I can’t wait to do some solo work again. Maybe Xera will give me some Quests – ooh, or the Star Council since I’m technically working for them also.
“Go ahead and drop it,” Greg said with confidence. “We’re far away enough no one will notice.”
>>>---<<<
The scrapyard they approached was big. Quinn used her wrist pad – which she had somehow upgraded in their short time in her hideout – to access the Webnet. Using a hacked satellite that she had a backdoor in ‘just in case’, she showed them a top-down view. It was ten miles across and fenced in on all sides.
Greg had them approach from the main road. The fencing had a large gate spanning the gap, and two watch towers were erected on either side with automated turrets that instantly locked onto them – but did not fire – once they were about two-hundred feet away.
Greg clicked the button a small, metal speaker-box on the side of the road. “Hey! Joaquin, you here!”
He let the button go and there was a static crackling for a few seconds before a grizzled voice came over the speaker. “Greg? You son of a bitch! You’re alive?” Again, static.
Greg keyed the button, “Damn right. I need a car. Long drive to South America.”
“A’ight. But it’ll cost you. Give me a sec for the security.”
The turrets deactivated, and the gates opened up. Greg waved the group forward, and a couple of large dogs began barreling towards the group. Jace instinctively pulled his sword out and pushed Priam behind him. But as they got closer, Greg knelt down and the dogs practically tackled him back a few feet. He was laughing and petting them.
“Ah, it’s good to see you both.” He eventually extricated himself from them, and both dogs went over to Jace, then Priam, and finally Quinn – sniffing them before trotting next to Greg as the four entered the scrapyard.
A pair of young men – barely older than teenagers, if anything – with the same rose-symbol tattooed on their shaved heads stood next to a large adobe-brick house. Beside that was an enormous garage – metal frames with sheet metal over the top. An absolute mammoth of a man – the same bulky size as Greg – came over and bear hugged him. “Greg! It has been way too long. Six months?”
Greg released him and nodded, “Yeah, it’s been a good while.” He wrapped an arm around the man’s shoulder, and Jace got a good look at him. He was obviously the father of the two teenage boys; with a shaved head, a scraggly beard, and warm, brown eyes. “Folks, this is Joaquin. Him and I served in combat. He’s the toughest bastard Mexico ever made!”
Joaquin pushed him off, “Nothing to it. Just had to keep this fat fucker alive.” He let out a raucous laugh. “So, what’s the news? You’re covered in crusted rock and have something fancy on under it.”
Greg held up his left hand, glowing with the green and brown Planet Cosmic Power symbol. “I’m an Aspirant. Tier 3.”
“No shit?” Joaquin laughed, “That’s amazing!” he pointed at his two boys, “You remember Joel and Diego, ya?”
Greg nodded and walked over to the two, “Didn’t go for Aspirant, eh?”
They both shook their heads in unison. “Dad said we would die out there without weapons.”
“And he was right,” Greg said. “I almost died.”
“No shit?” Joaquin asked.
“No shit. Okay. We’ve got a long road ahead. But first…” he reached into his Venture Pack and pulled out several bottles of alcohol, “I got you a present.”
“You should’ve opened with that!” Joaquin said. “Alright, what type of car you want? I got all types. Trucks, transports, sports cars – most of them are put together from scraps, but that’s perfect for you, right? If you’re driving to South America, you don’t want no problems a fancy new ride would bring.”
Greg waved Jace over, and Jace pulled out his sliverscreen. “What will 10,000 creds get me?”
Joaquin’s eyes went wide, “A lot…but the fuck happened to your eyes? Ain’t no cybernetics I’ve seen.”
“Mine are special,” Jace said as he turned on the charm and smiled. “So, 10,000 creds-”
“Yeah. I got just the thing. Follow me.” Jace did so, and the four Aspirants went deep into the scrapyard to a hidden garage. Junk was piled on top – but it looked like light weight junk so that it didn’t affect the structure’s integrity but would keep prying eyes from satellites out.
He sat down on a rigged bicycle next to a generator and began pedaling. “Give it a sec,” he said as he pedaled. A charge was generated and the doors on the garage slowly lifted.
“You mad bastard!” Greg said with barely contained glee as the doors lifted. “You jacked one?”
“Hell yeah I did!” Joaquin hopped off the bike and waved everyone in. The garage had several vehicles, but one was far more prominent than the rest.
Jace recognized it instantly. And it brought that festering hatred to his stomach again. The street folk called them ‘kin-catchers’, as the corpos would roll up in the armored personnel carrier, load in a bunch of street folk who were ‘loitering on company property’, and then take them to God-knows-where. This one looked decrepit.
Joaquin opened the doors, and Jace saw the inside was almost brand new. It even had a smell that was quite pleasant. “This was one that I jacked, personally, from a shipment with a crew of El Mencho’s boys. He got the combat rigs; but I got this baby. She purrs like a kitten when you turn her on and roars like a cougar when you get her going.”
He tapped the hood three times with his fist. “It’s got plenty of cargo capacity, and I modified it to run off of solar cells embedded in the body. It’s got a hydrogen-powered backup battery if you don’t have sunlight to charge it up. Plus, it’s spacious inside. Good for cross-land travel without having to bail out and set up camp.”
Quinn hopped into the back and nodded, “This will serve our purposes just fine. Did you disable the tracki-”
“Girl, I’ve done all of that. The tracking, the sub-tracking, acid-scraping all of the numbers, messing up the outside – ain’t no one going to know this is corpo property of General Logistics.”
“Jace, pay the man,” Quinn said as she connected a cord from her temple to an inner access port, and her eyes whirred in their sockets.
Jace pulled the sliverscreen credit transfer option up on his device, and Joaquin did the same. Jace keyed in the 10,000 and tapped his to the mechanic’s, and the balance transferred. “For 10k, I’m going to throw in something extra, just for friends of Greg.” Joaquin went over to a tool cabinet nearby and came back with a toolbox. “Repair kit. Got everything you need to fix almost anything that breaks down. If the engine or an axle cracks – you’re shit outta luck.”
Priam got into the vehicle, “Oh, it’s roomy!” Jace handed him the various bags and they got loaded in and secured under the seats. Jace moved up to the passenger seat as Quinn took the driver’s seat.
Glancing out the window, he saw Greg trading contact information for his new sliverscreen with his old friend before saying goodbye and loading into the back. The vehicle had two compartments that were connected to one another – the rear, armored section that had an open center space big enough for two people to lay down squished together, and two bench-style, padded seats with belts to keep people in place.
The front had two cushioned chairs and an open space in the center to get into the back. There was an instrument display in front of Jace, and tapping the ‘menu’ button, he found a readout of the vehicle’s various components in blue. Sort of like the…state of repair of each part of the vehicle. A status screen.
Priam laid down on one of the benches, “This is comfy. How long we have to travel?”
“3 days,” Quinn stated. She kept her head-cord plugged into the vehicle. “I’m directly interfacing and setting my brain to half-circadian cycling. Basically, I’ll be half-asleep and half-awake. Perfect for long distance drives.” She smiled, “Wish I had this for those cross-desert road trips.”
Greg got himself settled on the other side of the vehicle from Priam, “Let’s hit the road!”
Quinn started up the vehicle and for the first time in his life, Jace felt the strong thrum of a cushioned vehicle starting up. The hypercycle was an entirely different experience from this, and he felt extremely excited at the prospect of going fast but in the safe confines of this APC.
She began driving out of the scrapyard, pausing at the gates to wait for them to open before taking off and really pushing the vehicle into a higher gear, gaining speed as they made for the open road – and the Trans-American Highway.
>>>---<<<
The miles passed and Jace looked out the window at the landscape that sped by on the cracked-in-places road. The land between North and South America was not very populated, as large parts of the landscape were just simply too hot to live in anymore. He was quite thankful for the temperature-controlled climate inside the vehicle.
Priam spent almost all his time on his sliverscreen, learning about Earth as a consumed scholar would. Greg spent most of his time fiddling with the various firearms, taking them apart and reassembling them in between reading some book on his sliverscreen.
Quinn was…well, it was like she wasn’t even there. She was, and if Jace asked her a question, she numbly replied in monotone – but her responses were short, simple, and pointed.
For his part, Jace was musing on what his first target would be. Pheracorp had their main corporate sector in the city of São Paulo itself, the industrial center of Campinas, and the power generation in Rio de Janeiro. I’ll need to get my own ride. Preferably a hypercycle since I’m familiar enough with that. I’m sure I can buy one from a corpo-controlled place when we arrive. The more I look like I belong, the less suspicious I’ll be.
On the one hand, the industrial center would have a ton of targets to take down. A bunch of smaller targets, since Pheracorp produced specific items in small, custom batches. Unlike General Logistics in Beijing which had a few mega-factories producing all types of items in bulk quantity.
The biggest way to cripple their activities would be to go for the power stations and tidal generators off the coast – each of which was free-floating. They’d have backup fossil fuel generators; but fixing those tidal ones would take months.
“Ollie, I am going to need a way to swim out to those tidal generators. Thoughts?”
“Hmm.” Ollie scratched his chin. He had moved to the top of the dashboard rather than around Jace’s neck. “I think you should consider trying to upgrade your prosthetics. You are on a Tier 3 world now, so your legs are a bit outclassed.”
“I’d need a Legendary Rarity set, and I don’t know how to evaluate that,” Jace replied.
“I can tell by looking,” Ollie replied. “You’ll keep the (Overclocked) and (Lightfoot) Augmentations – but you would lose your once per day Starfire Stride. Plus, you do not need to have a doctor attach them – I can directly interface with them via The Cosmic System and…sort of graft them on? Just like when you use a Boon to manifest prosthetics.”
Damn. Starfire Stride is useful. Got me out of a few grim situations. “There’s no workaround?”
“Sadly, no. Only Augmentations carry over to ‘like’ items.”
“Well, worth asking. Does anyone who use that level of rarity get the Skills?”
“Nope! Just Aspirants and Ascendants. To anyone else, they would just have whatever normal functions in place they would usually have. Often, though, quality equates to rarity to a degree. So you would be looking for expensive, high-quality work.”
Jace nodded and looked out the window. Into the side-view mirror. And the cloud of dust approaching from the side of the highway. Shit. Rolling down the window, he popped his head out and saw vehicles approaching. “Guys, we’ve got company!”
