Practice in Deception

Char smiled as the last heavy lift drone detached from its cargo and took off. Using her internal rig to fly it into the cave mouth several kilometers away she landed it gently next to the four that were already there and wiped it’s GPS data before powering it down. She’d have to remember to head out to the cave in the near future and seal it up until she needed the lifters again but for now, all was good.

She turned and took in her new home. It was perfect. That old barn, had to be a generational, still standing after who knows how long. The iconic red was faded, and the white trim worn, but you could still imagine it as if painted new. She had lucked out when she found it, working a job and flying a surveillance drone through the area that night a few months ago, low enough to avoid radar, watching the ground zip past from her station back in her coffin room in the city, and there it was, big as anything, tucked among a copse of palo brea gone wild, their easy 10 meters height screening the barn from the land around it.

After the job she flew the drone back over the area, and even with her top of the line tech couldn’t detect any signs of habitation, except for the few local animals that eked out a life in the badlands. No signs of attempts at recent farming, no construction, just that iconic barn in the middle of nowhere with not even clear roads leading to it anymore. She started packing that night.

“Really though Char,” her sometimes partner and always friend Wil asked, “a musty old barn? What’s wrong with staying in the city?” Wil was smiling, his plump cheek ruddy from too much alcohol.

“I’m done with the city man,” Char responded earnestly, brushing a few strands of grey out of her eyes, “too many people, too many signals. I can get set up just fine out there, and I work remote anyway so the creds will keep rolling in.”

And that was that. Char gave Wil a heartfelt hug that night, though she could barely get her arms around him, and left with a “you know where I’ll be.”

Didn’t take her long to get set up either. After getting everything delivered and dusting her tracks it was a matter of a few days. First set up the power, and boy did that fusion genny put her back, then the simrig, and then like a maestro at an orchestra Char brought all of her helpers online. The small bird sized drones for security filtering out of the barn and finding roosts in a wide area watching all approaches, the ground drones, like loyal dogs, fetching and carrying the rest of her equipment, the spoofing mites and the data spiders, the cleaning bots and the printer pod, and at the center of the web was Char, jacked into the simrig and laid comfortably in her rigging creche. Two months since she had seen this old barn for the first time, and now she was home.

After a day or two of setup she was ready to work again, so she sent Temp a ping. He got back to her fast.

His slicked back hair and gold studded grin winked into view on her headsup “Yo Char, whatcha need.”

With a sigh she opened her voice comms. Temp knew she preferred text convos, but she did need creds, “Looking for work Temp, you know the drill. All set up now but bills are bills. You have anything?”

“Always got datasteal or datapurge work,” Temp with a thoughtful face, tapping his fat finger to his pointed nose as if in thought, knowing full well that wasn’t enough for her, “And one big job for the offing. Co-op, perfect for you and Wil.”

He couldn’t see her shake her head, Char didn’t do vidcalls, but she was sure he could hear the distaste in her voice as she sighed again, “Fine, send the data work along too, everything helps, but get me the file for the big op asap.” Temp opened his mouth to say more, that sneer that she hated beginning to form, but she cut the feed.

The file came through, not surprising, for though he was a piece of trash Temp knew how to find and set up jobs. Especially jobs that had a potential large cut for him. And from the offer that Char saw attached to the file Temps cut will be quite good. After her running gear was set up her bots had quickly put together the hab unit she bought from a failed space startup, and thankfully this one had a shower, so she hopped in and relaxed in the warm mist as she flicked through the file mentally.

It looked like a milk run, on site infil, connect to systems via hardpoint, pull and wipe data, exfil. Nothing she and Wil hadn't done before. She put together a suggested list of gear that Wil might need and prepped it for purchase should he accept. So she put in the call. Full vid this time, always full vid for Wil. He picked up as he was shovelling some wontons into his mouth, the chromed half of his face shining as if he just had a clean. Polite enough to swallow quickly, and with a bit of a huff as if some of it caught in his throat, he said “Hey girl, how’re the new digs?”

Always pleasantries first with Wil, part of why she liked him so much “Pretty good, all set up, now all that’s left is making it comfy. You’ll have to come by in a few days.”

“Course I will, you can’t hide out there and not expect me to come by,” Wil smiled, his teeth too white to be natural, his left eye blue like the sky on that rare clear day, his right shone red as it’s metal aperture clicked and whirred open and closed taking in everything around him, “but okay, whatcha calling for now? Job?”

Nodding as she brushed more grey strands out of her eyes, Char said “Yup, on sight plug in for me, detach then get out. You busy?”

He stood up and started heading down the street, the food truck fading in the background as people and neon streamed around him saying “Never too much for you kid. You got my shopping list together?”

Smiling at the thought that he knows her so well, she nods, and ends the call with “I just sent you the list, and the location. Be safe out there.” That done she pops out of the shower, dries off, and grabs a foodpac before dropping onto the hab’s bed. She sets her OS to ping her in 2 hours, figuring that will be enough time for Wil to get the gear he needs and get into position, and then sleep.

Awake before the ping Char sets up a linknet so she can ride along with Wil and pings him. He’s ready and accepts, and she has the feed from his right eye and his avatar, a chrome tusked boar, in her headsup “Read me kid?” he grunts as his heavy form leaps smoothly over a three meter fence.

“On ride along old man. You’re already further in than I thought,” Char smiled, knowing her wolfspider avatar would do the same in Wil’s display, “any resistance I should know about?”

Wil’s left arm, a thick mass of carbon fiber and cable comes into view as he punctures a metal panel and pries it open, “Nah, cakewalk. System was down when I got here. You did good, as always.”

Char sat up straight in her creche, alert, almost instinctively sending out sprites to run the wires, connect to and enable to the local security network, pull up an assault/trauma unit’s info, all as she hisses “I didn’t do it Wil. It’s a trap, get out of there.”

“Nonsense, ain’t nobody here girl. Let me just get you jacked in and you can get it done,” Wil says and she can hear the smile in his voice, Simple Wil, muscle and loyalty but not seeing the bigger picture. He connects a wire from his meched arm to the revealed panel and the way opens for her, and though Char continues to monitor the local system for trouble she starts the data grab as well. Microseconds it should take, but as it starts she hears a loud bang and hears Wil grunt. Her view from Wil’s eyecam angles down and she sees a spot of blood spread on his vest. The system sprites she sent out connect her to the local security cams and show her a small secforce, maybe ten of them, coming up behind Wil, guns drawn, Then another bang, and another spot on Wil’s vest.

“Wil you gotta get out of there,” Char pleads, the tears welling up in her amber eyes doing nothing to hinder the simrig’s view of Wil’s wounds. She connects to the assault/trauma unit, giving them his location, hoping they’ll make it in time.

Knowing they’ll be too late.

“S’fine Char. S’fine. Get those creds girl, stay holed up out there.” Wil gasped, another blossom on his vest, and another, and another as the secforce continued to fire. “You’ll be okay. Don’t worry about me.”

One final shot, mercifully cutting the feed from Wil’s eye, as their link was severed, but not before Char, on autopilot, pulled the data and wiped it.

And not before, over the security camera feed that they thought was disabled, disabled on purpose to lure Wil in, she saw Temp appear from behind the secforce, saunter up to Wil’s form, still on the floor, and put two fingers up against the fleshy half of his neck. He then pulled a datachit from one of the slots in Wil’s tech. Standing, and wiping his fingers off on one of the secforce’s uniforms, Temp slunk away, into the shadows.

He thought he was safe, that she hadn’t seen him.

He was wrong.

Char lay rigid in her simrig creche, emotionless. The tears would come later. The body wracking sobs. The anger. The fear. She had no time for that now. All that mattered was the work. She sent worms out into the net, sprites and VI avatars, all aimed at Temp and his business, his associates, even his friends and family, if he had any. Each strand she cast out added another layer to the trouble and loss that would fall upon that double dealing rat. And eventually, no matter how long it took, no matter how deep he dug in or how far he ran, he would misstep and she would have him.

She would make him pay.

In that old barn, in the middle of nowhere, within its faded slats and worn beams, a web was being spun that would burn down a city. For revenge. For a friend.