I push him onto the bed and grin wickedly.
“Now, I believe you mentioned something about ‘remember that strat the next time we meet’?”
6
[Eyes Like Melted Wax]
The ocean spray is cool against my face, at least what little of it remains uncovered by the skintight silkie infiltrator suit covering my body. A crescent moon gleams on the shifting wavetops, small sparkles reflecting like lightning bugs. The infsuit copies the dancing light, small sensors constantly sampling the surrounding visual information, turning me into another patch of choppy water indistinguishable from the rest.
Behind me, Ditchtown’s megaspires rise up into the night sky, a forest of shining lighthouses, windfarm blades spinning shadowy webs across their surface. A drifting shape briefly eclipses the moon, another ’Net balloon, one of the thousands keeping everything connected. Beneath the waves, murky domes beckon like underwater wisps—subsurface farming spheres filled with almost extinct crops used to growing on now-submerged land, now shielded from tornados and cat-sixes by a thick blanket of water. In front lies a half-kilometer-long cargo ship, like a megaspire turned sideways and placed into the sea.
My target.
The view is strangely barren without my AR glasses, but other than the infsuit, I’m running totally dark. Gummies pay for plausible deniability, and that means no identifiers, especially tech. I kept the suit from a previous job—told the gummies that it’d be less risky if they only transferred it to me the one time. Sawyer didn’t like it, but I don’t like him, so I guess we’re even. At least I’m spared from the constant stream of hate for a bit. A minor blessing.
Did some solo work in the Game after my rendezvous with Hamlin—daily social quests, restocking supplies for raiding, some unscheduled light PvP when a group of boardshits tried to jump me in Arthuria. Something ironic about seeing five knights in full chivalric armor screaming “DIE WHORECUNT!” as they tried to ride me down. Unfortunately for their egos, they were nothing but mid-tier wannabes, so all they accomplished was dropping a couple rungs after I cleaned them out and junked their gear. Almost felt bad for them, mistaking enthusiasm for skill.
Almost.
I motion to the shape behind the dinghy’s steering wheel, a wizened grayhat whose name I don’t know and doubt I’ll ever learn. He nudges the small inflatable craft toward the massive bulk of the container ship.
Up close, the size of it is staggering, a wall of metal stretching overhead, seemingly insurmountable. The grayhat keeps us from being crushed with consummate skill, a job he’s clearly done before. Time to get to work.
I sling a bullpup rifle over my back, loaded with tranqdarts, and make sure the combat knife is secured to my forearm. It’s different from my sword—lighter, smaller, covered in the same material as the infsuit—but a blade is a blade. The Game requires familiarity with a variety of weapons. I’m not sure where the grayhat got the rifle. Not my business.
A pair of geckgloves go over my already covered hands, hydrophobic aerosol applicators curling around the wrist sections like spongy bangles. Another piece of wargear drifting around Ditchtown. I make sure to keep them well away from my eyes. The left glove’s base bulges over the old-fashioned mechanical watch wrapped around my wrist, covering its durable chunkiness beneath springy rubber, timer counting down the hour I have before the grayhat leaves.
I place one palm against the side of the ship, and trigger a small burst from the aerosols. Water flees from the glove, repelled by the hydrophobic particles. Immediately, my hand feels anchored to the ship, van der Waals forces bonding the microfine tendrils on the gloves to the now dry metal. I lift myself up, abdominal muscles crunching together, and slap my other hand onto the ship, repeating the process. I give the aerosol time to dissipate, then peel my lower hand away and pull myself up again.
Slap. Twist. Peel. Slap. Twist. Peel.
Halfway up, pain shoots through my right shoulder, muscles cramping and twitching, still not recovered from my first encounter with Hammer, but revived a bit by the second. It’s been a long day. I ignore it and continue on.
Slap. Twist. Peel. Slap. Twist. Peel.
The climb seems endless.
Reaching the deck railing feels like a minor miracle, like I just soloed three top-tier combat zones simultaneously. I squat briefly and shake out my arms, trying to flush the lactic acid, then pull the geckgloves off and roll them into a leg pouch. I check the watch. Two hours until docking, one hour until dawn, forty minutes until my ride leaves. Tight, but doable.
I unsling the rifle from my back, snugging the polymer stock to my shoulder. It blends into the surroundings, outer casing shifting to match the infsuit’s camouflage. All around me, shipping containers rise up like slum apartments, corrugated metal sides painted with corp marks and graffiti. The magnetic grapples of a crane sway slightly overhead, drifting with the motion of wind and waves. I set off toward the bow, moving slowly, deliberately, giving the infsuit time to adapt its coloring to the environment.
Gummie intel put the target container in the third cluster from the front of the ship, on mid deck level. Easy access to clear out before customs arrives, whatever happens to be inside. Intel didn’t say much more than it would be a box, slightly larger than my head. Hopefully they weren’t wrong.
Aisle coming up to my left, a gap between containers. Gently, I peek around the edge, staying low. Nothing visible. Hold for a ten count, barely breathing. Sweat trickles down my back, hot and prickly.
Brief movement from one of the containers, a shifting swirl of blue into red, then back to blue. Great. Gummie intel didn’t mention infsuits on the other side. Typical.
Another swirl on top of the containers, patches of starlight rotating as if seen through a gravity lens. That makes two. Both impatient, undisciplined. Where’s the third?
I force myself to wait, track the brief signs of their movement, visual spoor. Still just the two, one monitoring the deck level, one on top of the containers. Either the third is somewhere I can’t see, or he’s practicing much better opsec than his companions. Regardless, I’m running out of time.
Burn that bridge when you get to it.
I draw a bead with my rifle, and it burps softly, once, twice, followed by the scraping thuds of two bodies collapsing. No guns appear, so it looks like at least that part of the intel was accurate. Slowly, making sure my infsuit has time to adapt, I stalk over to the container door, a metal slab designed to hinge out when unlocked, its only security an antiquated padlock. I pause by the door, waiting for the third guard to come to his partners’ aid.
Nothing.
I re-sling the rifle across my back and pull out a pair of lockpicks, thin metal lengths with oddly hooked ends. Two seconds later, the padlock clicks open in my hand. Gently, I lever the door open enough to look inside, hinges moaning softly.
Shadowed rows of boxes stacked neatly atop one another greet me, each one slightly bigger than my head, some sort of artwork on their side.
Ugh. Intel didn’t say which box to grab. Fucking gummies. Guess they’ll have to make do with one at random.
I pull a box out into the dim light of the ship and halt, momentarily frozen, now that I can see the art.
These… are haptic hoods, the new Golgbank models. Sarah was talking about upgrading to them. What do the gummies want with a silkie product? They’ve proscribed silkie tech in the drybur—