Bear And His Toy
When planning a for a job I do try and pick the ones with the least chance of getting me and the crew killed. Sometimes though the risker the job the better the payday. Sometimes the best laid plans go to shit. Whatever the case may be if things are getting ugly you want to make sure you brought the right equipment. Everyone has their taste for what kind of gun the like to bring to the party. Most the best stuff comes from WDI. You don’t become one of the big companies specializing in weapons without putting out some damn fine hardware. There are some smaller companies that might have that one specialty that is worth the credits. Find a good maker and the can usually juice up most anything to make it perform a little better. As I have stayed implant free most the high-tech stuff is wasted on me. No auto tracking ocular to feed in data to an aim assister. No quick twitch tendons in the hands to increase my finger movement. Most get them to increase their speed on a console but fuck if it doesn’t make you scary as hell with a semi-auto. I always was stuck to the good old fashion slug throwers. Give me something accurate that leaves a big hole and I’d do just fine. That was until I heard of a prototype from Warlord Defense that was worth risking my life for.
It was the first time I think I took a job I knew was stupidly reckless. I was driven more by fascination than greed. This wasn’t a gun, a science experiment, our work of art might be a better description. It was never going to make it out of the prototype phase as the cost to make one put WDI in the red for that quarter and they made three putting them in the red for that whole year. What made it special? It was a rail gun but unlike the other heavier models that required a battery pack or even the sleeker rifle version that traded power for speed and battery longevity, this was a compact handgun. This handgun had all the power of a turret mounted rail gun and you didn’t even have to carry mags of conductive rounds. The science is beyond me but it works something like this. The power source was a rare radioactive isotope that is not even from this planet but came down on a meteoroid. This material is almost an infinite energy source. I’ve had the gun for about five years now and it requires no charging and works as good as the day I stole it. That alone would make for marvel of a weapon, but WDI spared not expense or innovation. The conductive rounds can come from anything metallic. Again I’m pretty smart guy but you tell me how you can shove anything metal against the bottom of the grip and it starts to get disintegrated and get vacuumed in? Okay I know its something to do with nanobots but really, it’s still almost magic that metal goes in and then is formed into the conductive rounds internally. Literally infinite ammo. There is almost always some metal close by and for safe measure I always carry two steal rods. This beauty is overkill really! It fits in my pocket and leaves a hole the size of a hover car. It’s turned people into mist upon impact that terrifies even me a little bit.
This is a killing device made for the leader of WDI on an ego trip. Why three though well a family business it wouldn’t do for the heir to also be with out such a force of nature. The third though I was lucky enough to find out in a run was made for the head of The Guild. Now before I even knew the specifics on what this was the fact that the guild was involved piqued my interest. Once I broke some encryptions and learned it was one of only three and was being sent as a peace offering, I knew I wanted to rain on this parade. This job was hard to plan and even harder to convince my stone-cold crew of alpha strays that it was worth the risk. You see it was going directly from the fortress headquarters of WDI to the Guilds base of operations in London. Both heavily fortified and packed with people paid well to be killers. This compounded by the fact that from when I received the information, I had a short window to plan before the transfer was made. This wasn’t really a hack your way in kind of job and there was no way you could go at this brute force. When it came down to it I ended up having to almost bankrupt myself to get the moving parts in order. There would be no grand payday. I wasn’t gonna resell the gun I wanted it for myself. That meant I had to offer enough to get a few crew members to risk a suicide run with me. That was pure extortion, but I understand why. Thankfully Tiger the proud alpha female of my strays was smarter than me. Without her there would have been no plan so she was worth every cred. Now the price gouging I faced from the Makers when I went looking for a WDI strike aircraft that hurt. Apparently, it was the only fully reassembled strike aircraft using all original WDI parts. Tiger said this was a must for the plan to work but I almost gave up on the plan there. If I wasn’t for Tiger reminding of who I was taking the gun from my blind rage for the guild wouldn’t have made the money seem worth it.
So the day came and with no time to plant any of the crew inside WDI I had to result to kidnapping family and holding them hostage. This wasn’t me but the people being manipulated didn’t know I never meant them any harm and I had set aside money for them all after the heist success or not. This rather crude tactic gave me control of the driver and most the security team in the transport vehicle. Tiger thought it best not to try this tactic with the higher up strike team commander, she said he would be riding cushy shotgun in the front of the armed transport anyway. The plan was simple or maybe that’s what I convinced myself of. In transit there would be the transport vehicle shadowed by strike craft with sentry drones all around searching for any signs of trouble. From what we could learn it seemed the gun would be in a case then secured in another lock box in the transport truck.
Our helpers who wanted to keep their families alive would make sure the case was removed from the lock box on cue. This had to be done at the precise time so that the commander wasn’t alerted to the activity. Our only was a hit and run we could not handle a prolonged engagement with the WDI forces. So the crew came in on high speed bikes and closed on to the transport as quick as possible. Of course as soon as they were in bound the transport trucks and strike craft were alerted to their presence. We were hoping this heightened state of alarm would give us our window while they reacted. The strike craft immediately began raining fire down trying to take out the riders. This was the cue for “Helpers” They would begin the process of taking the case out of the lock box as soon as they heard the gunfire start. Tiger and I used this cue as well to fly in our authentic strike craft instead of peppering machine gun fire down we launched a rocket right at the back top corner of the truck. This is where there was a little gamble the Makers assured us that the armor piercing warhead would be enough to blow a hole in the trucks turtle like shell but they didn’t know if it would also kill all of our “Helpers” inside. We got lucky and no one had to try and jump of a speeder bike like some action holovid. There was someone inside left standing that was able to toss the case out as planned.
The other strike craft immediately began hailing us, high tech machines like this from WDI don’t miss targets as badly as to directly hit something else and the use of missiles around friendly’s was also suspect. We knew all the codes to send back but couldn’t hang around for them to realize that there was an extra craft in the air with them. This was it the speeder bikes began to break off any many different directions to scatter the sentry drones and work on successfully fleeing with the loot. I whip the strike craft vertical and push it to it’s limits upwards. Tiger goes to the back and hits the timers on two EMPs and opens the loading hatch. WDI makes good machines, built for all types of warfare. We knew their electronic systems were hardened against EMP but the system needs a chance to reset before it can withstand another blast. The first EMP goes of as the rest of the strike craft are following our flight path upwards. We are hit by the blast as well and all craft jolt and lose thrust power momentarily. The difference is we have our upward momentum and by the time the system recovers from the blast we have barely lost any speed. The WDI strike craft though were just turning upwards from the horizontal flight path they were on covering the transport truck. They almost hang in the air a moment stalled. As we are regaining full speed and putting a little distance between us they are just getting up acceleration. That is when the second EMP goes off. This could have also been disastrous even though it had time to fall longer there was a slight chance we might not have been able to clear the blast radius. We most have been leaving the edge because as the other crafts are shutting down and falling from the sky our systems flicker but don’t go out.
I’m still not sure if that was a successful job we lost two speeders crew from the machine gun fire. I paid out the beneficiaries their shares with the extra killed in action fee I extend my crew members. All in all I was lucky I owned my hideout because I was basically destitute from the expenses accrued in that job. I spent the next month eating nutritional paste from Karaguchi conglomerate’s poverty line foods brand. I always despised them giving out such slop to the poor when they make so much profit surely some better food could be sold at that price range. However, this time I was thankful for anything. I don’t know if it took me a week to crack the encryption on the case’s lock because I was under fed or because I had to work in a subzero freezer to keep the trackers disabled until I could get into the system to turn them off. I think had I not had a reputation for being crazy when it came to the Guild I would have lost some respect from fellow strays by the way I put so much on the line. No one gave me too much grief when I was taking every job I could get on to fill back up the coffers. Tiger did ask me if it was worth it a few years later. I reminded her about every time the Omnivore-540 had saved my life since and the cherry on top the sleaze ball leader of the Guild didn’t have it. Not to mention the tension that followed between them and WDI.
This story is inspired by the rich world being created for 2112.run. This unique transmedia NFT project . They will be releasing their crypto runner pfp nft’s this week. I recommend visiting their website and discord and diving into the lore and world building they have done. This is an unsolicited fan piece with no direct project influence other than the world they have immersed their community in.
Website: 2112.run
Discord: https://discord.gg/2112run
Twitter: https://twitter.com/2112Run?s=20
