Freezing Shadows, Chapter 30

Chapter 30: Survivors

Berzerker’s attack roll (Kill Team 8): 13d6 = 4 Hits, 3 Miss

Kill Team 8’s Reaction: 7d6 = 2 Hits, 0 Miss (2 Net Hits)

Short, Narrow Burst: 10P, -5 AP

Kill Team 8’s Damage Resistance: 11d6 = 3 Hits, 2 Miss (7P Damage)

Kill Team 8: 14/10 Physical Monitor (Dying)

Shadowgirl’s attack roll (Kill Team 1): 12d6 = 5 Hits, 3 Miss

Kill Team 1’s Reaction: 6d6 = 2 Hits, 1 Miss (3 Net Hits)

Semi-Auto: 8P, -5 AP

Kill Team 1’s Damage Resistance: 11d6 = 3 Hits, 3 Miss (5P Damage)

Kill Team 1: 9/10 Physical Monitor

Shadowgirl’s attack roll (Kill Team 1): 12d6 = 3 Hits, 2 Miss

Kill Team 1’s Reaction: 4d6 = 1 Hits, 1 Miss (2 Net Hits)

Semi-Auto: 7P, -5 AP

Kill Team 1’s Damage Resistance: 11d6 = 3 Hits, 3 Miss (4P Damage)

Kill Team 1: 13/10 Physical Monitor (Dying)

Two men stumbled out of the clouds of smoke left by Berzerker’s grenades. Picking themselves up and getting out of the smoke was all that they could manage at the moment, which was fine with me. The fewer people shooting at us, the better.

Berzerker dropped her grenade launcher on its sling, and pulled up the machine gun. A quick, three-round burst caught one of the downed gunmen before he could get back up. Given the state of the holes in his helmet, he wasn’t getting up again.

Shadowgirl looked over the remains of the car, and fired another two shots from her pistol. Good shots, even at eleven meters. The gunman went down, and wasn’t getting back up. Shadowgirl didn’t like to brag about it too much, but she was definitely a skilled shooter.

Iceblade casts Frost (Force 5)

Iceblade’s Spellcasting Test (Lieutenant): 13d6 = 4 Hits, 2 Miss

Lieutenant’s Reaction: 6d6 = 1 Hit, 2 Miss (3 Net Hits)

Frost: 8P, -half AP

Lieutenant’s Damage Resistance: 10d6 = 2 Hits, 2 Miss (6P damage)

Lieutenant: 10/10 Physical Monitor (Dying)

Resist Drain (5S): 13d6 = 4 Hits, 2 Miss (1S Drain)

Iceblade: 9/10 Physical Monitor

Iceblade: 1/10 Stun Monitor

Sexkitten’s Attack roll (Kill Team 3): 14d6 = 8 Hits, 1 Miss

Kill Team 3’s modified Reaction: 7d6 = 2 Hits, 0 Miss (6 Net Hits)

Short, Narrow Burst: 15P, -5 AP

Kill Team 3’s Damage Resistance: 11d6 = 3 Hits, 1 Miss (12P Damage)

Kill Team 3: 14/10 Physical Monitor (Dead)

Sexkitten’s Attack roll (Kill Team 2): 14d6 = 6 Hits, 3 Miss

Kill Team 2’s modified Reaction: 7d6 = 4 Hits, 0 Miss (2 Net Hits)

Short, Narrow Burst: 11P, -5 AP

Kill Team 2’s Damage Resistance: 11d6 = 4 Hits, 1 Miss (7P Damage)

Kill Team 2: 11/10 Physical Monitor (Dying)

Babydoll’s modified Drone Attack Roll (Kill Team 5): 4d6 = 2 Hits, 1 Miss

Kill Team 5’s modified reaction: 1d6 = 0 Hits, 0 Miss (2 Net Hits)

Long, Wide Burst: -5 Defense, 9P, -2 AP

Kill Team 5’s Damage Resistance: 14d6 = 3 Hits, 1 Miss (6P Damage)

Kill Team 5: 11/10 Physical Monitor (Dying)

Babydoll’s Attack roll (Kill Team 4): 9d6 = 3 Hits, 1 Miss

Kill Team 4’s modified Reaction: 7d6 = 2 Hits, 1 Miss (1 Net Hits)

Semi-Auto: 11P, -5 AP

Kill Team 4’s Damage Resistance: 11d6 = 2 Hits, 5 Miss (9P damage)

Kill Team 4: 15/10 Physical Monitor (Dead)

Pulling myself to one knee to look over the wrecked car, I took a breath as I saw the guy that put three in my chest. Figured I ought to return the favor, and make it personal. I hadn’t used attack magic too much, since the beta, since every time you cast a spell there was a decent chance you could knock yourself out, especially if you tried to power things up, but I didn’t trust my shooting at that range, with my wounds, and there was no way I could cover the distance and still be able to get into melee range with him.

Fortunately, I was damn good with attack magic. A bolt of ice flew from my hand as I cast the Frost spell, and took the lieutenant center-mass. He fell to the ground, and wasn’t getting up again, while I just had a headache I’d need to sleep off. I called that a win.

Sexkitten’s rifle sent two quick bursts of ‘love’ out, and two more of the gunmen got themselves removed from the gene pool. “Two more down! Only two left!”

The drone with the LMG rolled up, into the gap between the car and Berzerker’s van, and unleashed a six-round burst of ammo into the smoky cloud that had been concealing one of the remaining gunmen. There was a cry in the smoke that quickly choked off, as though the person making it was choking on their own blood. At the same time, there was another barely hearing-safe roar from Babydoll’s other drone as the cannon fired once more, and reducing the last gunman to a fine red mist from the waist up. “All hostiles down.”

“Good work, everyone,” I said as I hauled myself to my feet. I managed not to fall over, which I was calling another win for me right now. “Babydoll, roll in so you can collect your drones. Everyone else, search bodies, see if we can get lucky on anything, maybe find a way to see just who was behind this. Surviving a hit shows we’re not someone to take lightly. Properly responding to one shows we’re not someone to screw with, period.”

Twilight’s voice came over the lines. “Sorry, I wasn’t fast enough to kill the sniper’s eyes before he got you.”

“No worries, Twilight. You got held up because you were warning us about the bomb, right? If you hadn’t given us that warning, that thing would have gone off in our face. Without the van’s armor to protect us, we’d have been fucked up, for sure. You made the right call.”

Berzerker’s First Aid test (Iceblade): 10d6 = 5 hits, 0 Miss (5P damage healed)

Iceblade casts Heal (Force 5)

Iceblade’s Spellcasting test (Iceblade): 9d6 = 5 Hits, 2 Miss

Heal: 4P healed, Sustain reduced to 3 Turns

Resist Drain (2S): 13d6 = 6 Hits, 3 Miss (No Drain)

I made my way over to Berzerker’s van and sat in the open door as the others started checking the bodies for anything useable. Well, all the others except for Berzerker herself. She got busy with a medkit that had been strapped to one of the gun racks in the van, and started trying to patch me up. Her work with the medkit got me most of the way back to healthy, and my magic did the rest. Still had that headache from before, but I would live, and that was the important thing.

A little bit later, Babydoll’s van drove up, and her drones began lining up so that they could dock with their racks. Having a drone rack meant that it was easier for a rigger to deploy drones without dragging them across the sprawl out in the open, or having to take minutes setting up to launch them. The landing drone racks she had on her van, though, were even better, because the things were able to automatically hook the drones back up. Major convenience when you needed to get the hell out of dodge.

That much, I was expecting, as well as Berzerker standing over me, like a protective guard dog. But then the unexpected happened, as Twilight rushed up to me, worry etched clearly on her face as she patted my chest where I’d been shot. “Are you ok? How bad is it?”

I grinned at the tsundere technomancer, and pulled her into my lap. Ignoring her yelp of surprise, I said, “Already healed up, for the most part, thanks to Berzerker’s skill with a medkit, and my magic. The others are looking for anything we can use out of this. But I am glad you were worried about me, Twilight.”

The scowl on Twilight’s face was ruined by the way her blush reached her ears. “Sh-shut up! Baka! I was just worried, because I saw you getting shot on the cameras. It is only natural to be worried when a teammate gets hurt like that in front of you!”

Berzerker giggled at “Oh, but what about when Shadowgirl and I got hit earlier, when we were fighting the dragon, hmm?”

“Th-that was different! I couldn’t see that happen, because I’d been dumped after crashing the transmitter! By the time I was back to normal, everyone was already healed up, and you were on your way back!”

“Is that so? But it doesn’t explain why you’re looking so cozy in my Master’s lap. Perhaps my Master just got himself a second kitten to play with, along with Sexkitten?”

Twilight sputtered to try and make a decent argument, while trying (weakly) to escape my arms keeping her in my lap, but she was ‘saved’ by Babydoll and the others walking up at that moment. The rigger grinned, and said, “Well, as much as I would hate to break up this charming domestic scene, the drones are loaded, and everyone’s finished checking the bodies that still have enough put together to look through.”

I let Twilight go as we switched to business, and said, “Anything worth taking?”

“Not really. Most of their gear is generic, but personalized just enough that you would need to redo all the grips if you wanted to hand them to someone else. Worse, all of it is lousy with RFID tags. Like, run it over with a tag eraser eight or ten times, and you still won’t be sure if you got all of them. If we stripped the bodies and took them to a chop shop, we could probably sell their chrome used, but despite some of it looking high-end, I’d be willing to bet their ware, and maybe even their meat, has trackers.”

She took a breath, and said, “Some of the commlinks survived, though. At least enough that we could extract data to a burner commlink. I think we got a copy of their orders, which means we might be able to arrange a proper ‘thank you’ to whoever decided to throw this party for us.”

“Anything else we can get off them?”

“Just some nucred. Each of them had exactly 3k nucred on their links, except the lieutenant you iced, who had 6k. Split six ways, that’s 6k each. Don’t worry, we made sure to run it through the disposables, first.”

“That’s fine,” I nodded. “Send the order info to Twilight, so she can clean it up. We’ll have a chat with Alisha, see if she can’t use her network to see if we can get a name to go vent our frustrations on.”

“Well, it won’t be my former customer, that’s for sure,” Sexkitten said. When I looked her way, she just shrugged, and said, “Found his body in the car. Explosives were mostly in the trunk and the engine compartment. Guy was on the floor in the back seat. The bomb tore up most of his body, enough that you wouldn’t be able to tell how he died, but this might be the guy’s own car, because there was armor for the interior, which dampened the blast enough that I recognized his jewelry. So, whoever it was decided that the cutout needed cutting out for real.”

“Which tells me that whoever sent us on that job probably knew the target was a dragon. Don’t know if this was just a way to test his defenses, or shake him up, but I doubt we were intended to be successful. But, even if the dragon is 100% dead, dragons have friends, and whoever did this is trying to make sure it doesn’t lead back to them. If we’d died here, then the trail goes cold, after all.”

I sighed, and stood up. “But enough of that. Let’s get back to base. We can chat with Alisha later on, when the sun’s up. For now, I think we could all use some sleep.”