Title: Night City Tales: Dustdown v1.5
Tags: CPv3, cyberpunk, scifi
Blog Entry: He crouched in the shadows overlooking the Arasaka Towers. For a day now, he had set up his arsenal, watched and waited. Absorbing the patrols of the guards, knowing their shift changes like clockwork, waiting for the call that would be the beginning of the end of all this waiting. He couldn’t help but think on the irony of Silverblue Alpha’s choice of lairs. At first, he had not wanted to believe that all of this was possible. Mankind’s arrogance, in creating a monster that had the will and capacity to destroy its creator. The existence of these electronic beings of such malevolence. And he could not believe that one or possibly more of the parts of the same whole could be radically different. He’d been convinced, though. He had joined the cause. While others had gone elsewhere to gather those who would stand against this plot, he had stood watch. Black leather swathed him, black greasepaint covered the smooth chromed features of his face, black sunglasses covered the chrome orbs of his eyes. No light shone from his hunting stand; lowlight and infrared guided his scouting. The arsenal he’d collected surrounded him in the small space he’d claimed. There was the BudgetArms c-13, ready to go in the holster in his boot as a holdout. The twin Armalite 44s were ready to be housed in the holsters under his arms. The HK MP-11 assault carbine was ready to be slung over his shoulder. The Barrett Light 50 sniper rifle, ancient yet still quite serviceable, stood at the ready on its bipod to provide cover fire for his fellow warriors. His personal favorite was the Kang Rapid Assault Shot 12, which he kept slung at his side. And then, of course, there was his powersword leaning against the wall in its carbon fiber sheath for the up close work. He checked their loads again for the twentieth time since he’d gotten the text that they were on their way, then began to clean them again. This absorbed some of the slack time waiting. He then put each weapon carefully in its place, preparing for the assault he would make. Beside the Barrett lay a grapplegun whose line had been guaranteed to hold up to six hundred pound. His synthetic body was a little over half of that. He then checked the load of the Barrett, and got behind it. A few more minutes; he punched up the DungeonDelvers holovid on his agent, and started it up again from its pause. The tiny elf danced over the screen at his direction, slaughtering countless ghouls in search of his lady fair. Lady fair…the misslegun had fired, but its loadout went over his shoulder…she couldn’t shoot him…but neither could he shoot her…even knowing how inhuman she was. She had fallen against him, sobbing, begging for forgiveness, for help, for love. Her words struck a nerve. “Are you and I any more different, with you being a human in a machine body? Please, I love you Micah, listen to me,” she had said. Could a machine, a program, love? Could it know pain, feel the agony of defeat or the exhilaration of a hard-won victory? He could. And he was little more than a machine himself. What little that was actually flesh and blood left of him fit into a small capsule the size of a football. She had confessed everything to him then in that darkened tunnel. How much strength had that taken from her, to tell him the whole of her truth? Most humans shared things among themselves less easily. The text came, but he didn’t need it to tell him that the AVs were arriving, twenty one stories beneath him. Their roaring engines said it all. He watched them disembark, both the soldiers and his fellows. They went in, and he watched and waited through the lens of the Barrett’s scope for them to reach the top. Billy Silver, the Mexicalland Idol awaited them, surrounded by five men wearing black suits. It wasn’t Billy Silver though, he knew. Billy Silver was climbing the stairs, heading for the trap he had helped lay for Silverblue Alpha. He waited, the moments passing, as the group climbed out of his view up the inside of the resurrected Arasaka Tower. Then he saw them entering the room, moving through the maze of computer banks, and into the central area where “Billy” and his people awaited them. The scope of the Barrett passed over each of the soldiers, “Billy”, and the five men around him. Then he saw “Billy” raise the pistol. The plan was falling into place, but the bullet slamming into the woman in the tower across from him hurt to watch almost as much as it surely hurt while tearing through her flesh. She went down, and he began to squeeze his finger on the trigger of the sniper rifle. He watched as the small Asian man spun gracefully, with unearthly speed, gripping the arm of the soldier behind him and directing the soldier’s rifle to fire. Nine men went down, but not by his bullets. The Asian man was something else. He nodded approvingly. As the Asian man rose and danced across the floor towards the six men at the divan, he dropped his grip on the Barrett and lifted the grapplegun. Firing, a long string of monowire spread from his position to the wall of the tower across from him just above the window he watched through. Gripping a leather strap, he hooked its karabiner to the monowire and swung himself through the window. He grabbed the belt of the powersword as he exited, looping it over one shoulder. He slid along the length of the monowire swiftly, raising the MP-11 assault carbine to his shoulder. The guards on the roof were already moving. The carbine coughed, sending its lethal passengers into the guards on semiauto. He emptied the clip as he slid further, and the guards all fell. He pushed the shoulder sling of the carbine off of his shoulder and let it drop. Something streaked into a window then, what looked like an animal. It carried something, which it dropped into the Asian man’s hands. A duo-katana, he saw as the man unwrapped it. He wielded it with frightful efficiency and deadliness, moving among the five men as though they stood still. Then one of the soldiers stepped up, blocking the man’s slash towards one of the five men. He flew through the window, landed on all fours with a loud thump, as the Drifter’s duo-katana shattered on the soldier’s arm. They moved so quickly, locked in a death dance, as he ran to them. Billy Silver fought with Billy Silver. Then the soldier fell. The Drifter turned from the fallen man; both he and the Idol saw what was happening before the Drifter did. The soldier, who he could see was a cyborg now with the glint of the grey static video screens off of a metal skull, stepped up to Billy Silver, gripped the dead Drifter’s duo-katana, and made a sharp downward slash. With one motion, he drew his powersword and blocked the deadly arc. “Wanna dance, motherfucker?” he said to the cyborg, grinning wildly. He looked the cyborg over, noticing that the metal of his face looked shiny and new. Silver had mentioned by text that the guy had something that was kind of like a self-repair unit; that explained the new metal, then. Nanites, probably. The cyborg’s red eyes gleamed evilly in the half-light. It stutter-stepped towards him, an obvious feint with the three long blades, and opened its mouth. He knew what to look for. The snake lashed out at him, headed straight for his chest. He lashed out with one hand to catch it inches away; the thing twisted in his grasp violently. “Oh, I am so wise to your little tricks, bitch” he said, grinning, and then looped the sword around one-handed. The powersword’s vibrating blade connected with the segmented titanium plating of the snake’s outer shell and it sliced through. The snake flopped around on the floor, its blades still whirring. Desperately, the cyborg pulled out the first digit of his left thumb, and swung a length of monowire at Silver’s neck. He whipped up the powersword to intersect, and the monowire is severed. The thumb-tip flew away. The cyborg thrust its wolvers at his midsection, and the powersword’s thick vibrating blade slid between the first two. He twisted his blade, and the two wolver blades were sliced free of their mounts. The cyborg ripped its fingerblades over his chest, and the blades dug in and tore out a section of artificial flesh and lubricating fluid. He staggered back, and looped the powersord around again. The cyborg ducked under it, came at him again. The rippers tore off most of his chromed cheek. The cyborg danced back, laughing. The sword swung around again, digging a deep furrow in the metal of the cyborg’s right arm. With a great heave, he arced the powersword back around again, catching the cyborg in the knee. It sliced through, and into the other, and through it, and the cyborg fell to the ground. As he swung over his head, bringing the powersword down towards the cyborg’s head, it rolled from the blade. The powersword buried itself deep in the nanocrete, and he struggled for a moment to pull it free. As he turned to the cyborg, ready to cut its head free of its shoulders, the jumpsuit stretched into an impossibly large bulge at the crotch. It then exploded into a cloud of torn fibers. He brought up the powersword in the path of the projectile, and a flash of light brought a stream of metal flechettes into contact with his body, the powersword’s blade, and ripped into the right side of his face which was not yet covered by the sword’s blade. He fell back, pain sensors flaring, powersword clattering across the nanocrete floor. He lay still for a moment, and cut the tactile boost to his Livemetal body to end the pain flaring through his face. He then sat up, and saw the cyborg dragging itself on its hands and the stumps of its knees towards Silver, who just sat there looking at it in shock. Time to finish the job I’ve started, Schussler thought.
VIEW FULL VERSION: Link