Co-written with Siege!
Zubrich Planetary Police Precinct Lugano-1
The blast caused chaos in more than one place. The ZPP precinct in Lugano was a posting most police officers considered cushy and uneventful: they spent their days directing drones that chased pickpockets identified by AI systems, and listening to complaints about noise, loud music and nudist Zigonians. Terror attacks were a theoretical possibility, but the town was politically insignificant, and automated systems were enough to pick up the occasional lunatic trying to bomb a power station or a crowd of tourists.
That was why the precinct was now a site of absolute, absurd panic, as officer ran around the building, shouted at each other, grabbed their service weapons, asked their commanders for directions and generally overreacted. Which was why a response that in any other city would’ve taken at most five minutes stretched into an utterly unacceptable fifteen.
The result was still quite impressive, though, as a swarm of police LARCs, six light wheeled armored vehicles, two hoverlift gunships and more than fifty armed officers descended upon the network hub: not counting the news drones that arrived mere seconds after the explosion and were already broadcasting the fire and police response throughout the Zubrich networks: fortunately for the CEID team, the blast and their little sabotage caused widespread bandwith clogging and errors, making the reports difficult to circulate outside of separate government networks.
However impressive the show of force might’ve been, the brief delay in police response allowed August and Freki to exit the facility with their stolen memory chips. They still had no idea what exactly happened, but decided they’d have plenty of time to find out later. August rushed at street level, his adaptive disguise allowing him to blend into crowds of onlookers, rapidly changing his look. Freki instead used his current body to blend into high-level drone traffic, monitoring the situation and updating August in real-time. Their current objective was to get as far away from the hub as possible, and it looked like they may just succeed - until one of the LARC gunships angrily patrolling the area descended rapidly and swept its disruptor array over a crowd, messing up August’s adaptive disguise.
“This is the Planetary Police! Stop immediately!”, the gunship blared through its loudspeakers. The pilot wasted no time calling for help, but he found his communications jammed. His quarry in the meantime leapt across the street from a standing start and disappeared into a crowded store, the adaptive disguise still flickering from its brief encounter with the disruptor.
Of course, that couldn’t - and didn’t - quite work as far as blending in with the crowd was concerned, as August’s battle-armored body was now surrounded by a flickering, messy projection which if anything made him stand out more than his true hulking form. The crowds scattered in panic when he came crashing through the front door, throwing aside a security bot that tried, impotently, to stop him with a wireless taser. Downloading a detailed map from the store’s public-access server, the replicant began to make its way through the building.
It would be improper to say he was scared. More annoyed at the sudden appearance of rare and expensive anti-espionage technology in the hands of police on a fringe world like Zubrich. His control systems were scrambled, and he’d need time to restore the disguise - and even then, another disruptor sweep would surely defeat it again. Fortunately, he still had backup.
Freki, I need those gunships taken care of.
The response was but slight sideband scatter full of joyful glee.
Outside, both gunship circled above the block, sweeping their disruptors over crowds of people rushing out side doors, when one of them exploded with no visible cause, raining debris on the sidewalk below. The second LARC reacted quickly, rapidly gaining altitude, and acquiring the perpetrator - a cloud of small drones, previously hidden amongst the swarms of various media and C4I machines now cluttering the airspace. It didn’t waste any time, blasting it with two high-powered lasers.
Amazingly, it missed. One of the bigger drones angrily buzzed right next to the gunship’s hull, cutting off one of the grav-modules with a scythe of invisible force. The gunship spiralled to the ground and crashed between abandoned ground vehicles littering the street.
Done, the drone pulsed to its partner below.
August, having resolved the problem with his disguise, was observing the carnage through a hijacked media drone feed.
Goddammit, Freki!, he pulsed
What?, came an innocent response. The wreck of the first LARC was starting to shake with secondary explosions of its ammunition and power sources, spewing thick black smoke into the air.
We better move. They might send the Army if this keeps up.
Oh yes. You should go right, by the way. There’s armor coming your way from the left.
August skidded to a halt and turned around just as the first light armored vehicle rounded the corner. Unfortunately, when they saw a civilian change directions mid-stride during a full on run, they correctly assumed it was a disguised foreign agent, and opened fire.
August dove forwards, his heightened senses allowing him to watch the air sizzle and evaporate as it came in contact with the high-powered autolaser. Almost without a stop, he bounced off the sidewalk and leapt across the street, latching onto the facade of the store he just left, scaling it with a few rapid movements. Another autolaser burst set the entire facade on fire and blew large chunks off it, peppering August’s force-shield with white hot shrapnel.
Freki then swept in, low above the street, only to pop up at the last moment and fry the LAV with two energy blasts at close range, blowing out its sensors and fire control electronics. Before he could pop back down, an autolaser burst from one of the remaining LAVs caught his body square in the side. August watched as the cluster spiralled out of control and disappeared between two buildings. He wasted no time and broke into a run, leaping across streets and alleys separating the loosely clustered buildings of Lugano, moving south, straight towards the lake. He could handle the remaining LAVs himself, but not before heavier forces would start arriving.
Not too far away, a lithe figure of a Maibatsu Type 23 Assault Frame slid into a vent and activated its adaptive disguise. Legion didn’t really believe in luck, but he had to admit the turn of events was an awfully chaotic variable to introduce into its plans: the coincidence of running into the CEID team at the precise moment it planned to blow up the hub was incredibly improbable. It didn’t matter, though: the tracker program warned Legion of the intrusion, and the hub’s main storage servers were still blown apart even if the bomb wasn’t optimally placed. All that was left now was the bank’s mainframe.
Almera Colony
Algeira, Newark, five years ago
Fifty thousand marks were merely half a year’s salary for most Algeirans. For someone from Pelania, it was an unimaginable fortune. It was enough to get the two brothers, Malik and Jamal, set up comfortably: they got new identities, rented an apartment and found jobs. Algeira was so much different from the poor, dilapidated nation they both came from: safe, well-organized, with plentiful food, work and entertainment. Life was good for the brothers, even with the growing internal dissent and common rioting that was increasingly plaguing the country. Newark was still rather quiet, though.
They still had problems, of course. Malik never came to terms with what they did back home, to get the money. He still had nightmares from that fateful night in Corinth, where they murdered an albino girl so that they could sell parts of her body to rich collectioners. He often woke up in the middle of the night, panting and sweating: he’d walk to the fridge, get something to drink and sit still until morning - and that fateful night wasn’t any different. Well, until he got to the kitchen, anyway.
“Hello”, he heard a voice from the darkness. Malik yelped in fear and dropped the water glass, which shattered on the floor, “Remember me?”
He didn’t, but years of living in Pelania did its thing. He leapt into the living room and grabbed a large club the brothers kept there for just an occasion, shouting to warn Jamal. His brother didn’t need any extra warning, though: he was already out of bed, running towards the living room with a hatchet in hand.
Armed and ready, they faced the kitchen door. A woman came out of them in not much of a hurry, seemingly oblivious to the two strong, armed men standing before her. She only wore a pair of tight jeans and a white t-shirt, clearly showing she had no weapon.
“Get out!”, Jamal screamed at her, waving the hatchet around, “Or else!”
The woman nodded sagely, as if she remembered something, “Ah, yes, right. It’s the new body. Of course you can’t recognize me.”
Jamal glanced at his brother. Malik shrugged, trying not to show his fear. The woman seemed just...crazy, but something in what she said brought back the terrible memories he was trying to forget every day.
But could it really be? The woman standing in their living room was healthy ; The girl that haunted Malik was an albino. The brothers’ victim was also young, barely more than a child, while here was a fully mature woman. And lastly, she wasn’t dead, which was probably the most important detail.
“GET OUT!”, Jamal’s scream brought Malik back to reality.
The woman sneered, “Or what? You’ll call the cops?”
Jamal screamed and swung the hatchet. Malik watched with utter horror as his brother was thrown across the room by some unseen force, crashing into the wall and instantly going limp. Malik stood there, paralyzed with fear, as the woman approached him and grasped his head firmly.
“You can’t recognize me, but I can. Both of you.”, she whispered, staring into Malik’s eyes. The man whimpered, having found something in her face, something horrible, the tell-tale sign of a mind consumed with hate.
She started slowly, deliberately twisting his head around with inhuman strength.
The Blackjack, in orbit over Zubrich
She was roused from her sleep by an urgent data packet from the Dollmaster. Having to work across a tertiary data-band was awfully annoying, but had the benefit of data standing out from the usual mental activity of a human brain - kind of like low-resolution black-and-white images would stand out from your typical visual input.
Vilena Soruga, report to the CIC immediately, Dollmaster demanded across the link. Another artifact of having to work with low-bandwith comms bands was that very little real work could be done outside the ship’s command centre.
Vilena quickly got up from her spartan cot and left the tiny cabin assigned to her during the stay aboard the
Blackjack. A detached part of her mind, the analytical side of her added to the original personality, noticed the usual gloomy interiors were now well lit. Either the ship went into a day cycle, or it was now operating at a higher state of readiness.
The CIC was awash in visual information, so Vilena guessed it was the latter. The moment she stepped through the armored door, she was accosted by hologrammatic displays showing the planet below, and dozens of news channels. She could already see the problem: most of the news feeds had smoke, fire or both on them.
What happened?, she inquired the ship’s CI. Dollmaster replied quickly, in his usual detached tone.
I have been intercepting news reports about a series of terrorist attacks against network hubs on the surface, including the one in Lugano that agents August and Freki were infiltrating. I may need to consult with you. Stand by.
Vilena took a moment to review the information that was flooding her senses. Friday entered the CIC as she was doing that - the CEID psion had already used her d-link to get intimately familiar with the situation, and couldn’t help but smirk at the Collector liaison’s attempts to filter through the inefficient visual media.
“Having trouble, hon?”, she asked with a wry smile.
“No”, Vilena replied, staring at the visage. Her augmentation allowed her to sort and collate information much quicker than baseline humans, but it still took several minutes before she had a good idea about the situation.
“Zubrich military has been put on high alert”, Dollmaster interrupted, “They are switching codes. I will be unable to monitor government communications for some time.”
Even Friday was beginning to get somewhat worried now, her amusement now replaced by a professionally cold, analytical demeanor.
“Any chance your people had something to do with it?”, she asked Vilena, this time without a hint of irony.
Vilena replied without taking her eyes off the screens, “Negative. Our team was operating in Lugano at the time... besides, we hadn’t even touched at least 60% of the destroyed nodes.”
Friday went over the materials again in a split second. The crazy girl was right - “When can we reestablish communications?”
“If we are to remain undetected, another three to four kiloseconds...”, there was a brief pause, “...or not. I am receiving a...submesonic feed from the surface.”
With a flicker and crackle, another hologrammatic construct appeared between the already nigh unreadable displays. The video was garbled and flickering, and the audio much worse. Vilena didn’t want to think how the transmission would feel when received directly: though Friday’s sudden scowl seemed to indicate just how bad.
“We have secured a small submesonic core”, One’s voice barely came through, but was generally understandable.
“Hold on”, Friday frowned. “There are no submesonics in Lugano, the nearest one...”
“...is located at Lausanne Air Force Base”, Dollmaster finished for her, “I am receiving a position feed from the Collector team which confirms their location.”
Friday shot Vilena a look. “What are they doing there?”
One didn’t deem the question important enough to answer, choosing instead to continue with his situation report, delivered verbally due to the low bandwith of that particular submesonic core, “The Lugano operation was a complete failure. Both targeted network hubs were destroyed by an unknown actor. We have also discovered the fact similar attacks have occurred throughout the planet, and thus decided to immediately reestablish communications.”
The CEID agent’s frown deepened. “LEGION is cleaning house.”
“A reasonable assumption”, Dollmaster confirmed, “I am running an analysis on the attacked networks, but I lack full data at this moment.”
Vilena pulled up the list of all the attacked nodes they knew about so far: it was most likely incomplete, as the scale of the attack caused widescale network disruption - normally, Dollmaster would be able to ascertain the exact amount of targeted nodes, but they didn’t have access...
“One”, Vilena turned to the emotionless robotic mask staring at her through the hologrammatic screen, “Set up an access point for Dollmaster through the core.”
“Affirmative”, the screen replied, and cut the video feed to conserve bandwith.
As soon as it had an opening, the CI began scouring what was left of the Zubrich Datasphere for data, rapidly building up a database. It began to search for clues, common elements that connected the attacked nodes together: it juggled massive amounts of information, comparing it to billions of data points per second.
Due to the narrow pipeline connecting Dollmaster to the planet, the process took an agonizing ten minutes to accomplish, but the result was as precise as ever.
“Every single one of the attacked nodes ran contractual services related to offsite backups and traffic monitoring for the First Security Bank of Zubrich.”
“Son of a bitch...”, Friday hissed. Everyone expected LEGION to try a more subtle approach to covering his tracks, but that made a lot of sense. Electronic attacks could leave recoverable data, while vaporizing a computer mostly didn’t, “...can you figure how many hubs are still left?”
“Of course, Agent Friday...”, Dollmaster seemed slightly annoyed at the suggestion he did not already consider the possibility, “...none.”
“That only leaves the records stored in the bank itself.”, Vilena noted, “Will he try to break in there?”
Friday sneered, “He could try...it would save us all a lot of work with the security setup they have there.”
“We can’t risk him blowing up the bank. That’s literally our last lead!”, Vilena shot back, “We must get there first and secure the data we need.”
“Vilena Soruga’s assertion is correct. It is very likely the attacks were part of a well-prepared operation. It is likely LEGION has determined a way to penetrate the bank’s defences already, and is merely carrying out his plan.”
With a garbled crackle, One came back on the line, “Then we should proceed immediately. I have just discovered that units of the Zubrich Army and heavy Planetary Police responders have been ordered to converge on the planetary capital. I am having trouble determining the reason.”
“What? How did you do that?”
“We have our methods, Agent Friday. I suggest everyone in orbit prepare for insertion into the capital, while we attempt to outrace the locals on the ground.”
The feed was cut before Friday could deliver her irritable response.
Lausanne Air Force Base, surface of Zubrich
One turned away from the submesonic core assembly, located securely in a vault below the airbase complex. He passed a drooling guard without attracting a single glance, then casually leapt up an empty elevator shaft, using his body’s built-in gravitics. From there, it was a short walk to the lobby.
All the guards from the surface had gathered there. They were staring at the walls and mumbling to themselves, completely oblivious to the caped skeletal figure walking amongst them.
Something flickered and appeared between the men. Agent August looked around, briefly disoriented before regaining his composure, and stared at the Collector agent from beneath his battle-armor’s mask.
“You know, when your buddy said he’d bring me to you...I kind of assumed he meant a vehicle.”
“What’s the status of Agent Freki?”, One didn’t deem it necessary to comment, chosing instead to skip straight to the point.
“Down in the city. I would’ve been unable to get to him in time before heavy army units arrived.”, August replied without a hint of concern in his voice, “His frame will self-destruct if tampered with, so there’s no risk of the operation being compromised.”
“Good. Standby...”, there was a brief pause as the Collector transferred the contents of his conversation with Dollmaster to August, “...we should proceed immediately.”
August half expected them to just...teleport to the capital, but he heard the low hum of an approaching LARC instead. He made a note of that - whatever device or trick the second Collector used to rapidly bring him here had a range below four hundred twenty kilometres.
The heavy LARC transport stopped outside and opened its side ramp. Without a further word, One boarded the vehicle. August looked one last time at the mumbling, drooling guards - recording them in every EM spectrum he could - and followed suit.
The vehicle’s cockpit was occupied by a floating serpentine creature resembling a snake’s skeleton, coiled on one of the seats. It touched the controls with one of its razor-sharp claws and the vehicle lifted off, rapidly gaining speed.
All that was left was hoping they’d get to the capital before the Army.
Baerne, capital of Zubrich
Government Plaza
Legion watched the Planetary Police surround the bank’s headquarters. They had, predictably, figured out what connected all the destroyed network hubs together. They did have CIs of their own, after all, and it wasn’t exactly hard to add two and two together. At least not for something more efficient at thinking than a squishy organic.
So far, everything was going well: save the mishap at Lugano. Legion didn’t expect the CEID to move
that efficiently: he was vaguely aware of their movement across the planet, of course, but them arriving in Lugano at the exact same time his bomber did was an unfortunate coincidence. Still, they didn’t manage to actually save the hub, so the whole thing worked out in the end, even if Legion had to sacrifice that organic. Small loss.
This time, however, it had to go just right. The First Security Bank Of Zubrich was a facility up to all galactic standards, and that included their security setup: while Legion could penetrate it, doing that usually required painstaking preparation, for which he just did not have the time. The sensation of doing things by the seat of his proverbial pants was somewhat new, but enjoyable. While he had no adrenal glands, he enjoyed the stimulation of the myriad possibilities arising from such improvisation.
But enough introspection. It was time to check his assets. He began to send secured messages across the temporary shadownet he set up in the neighborhood.
At about the same time, two women briskly made their way across the tight, winding streets of Baerne. They did not particularly stand out from the colorful crowds of tourists and locals mingling on the streets, except perhaps for Agent Friday’s gigantic, all-black eyes. Even Vilena’s cybernetics were nothing out of the ordinary on that planet: while its architecture was rustic (to not say archaic), modern amenities were quite common on Zubrich thanks to its proximity to Solarian space and general wealth.
They, too, carried a shadow network, separate from the planetary datasphere, shared between all agents in the area thanks to extremely sophisticated frequency-hopping comms links. Even Vilena was allowed access, though Dollmaster took great pain to separate her from any sensitive information.
Above them, hiding in the cluttered airspace, a swarm of control drones dubbed “The Eye” by the Collectors hovered, coordinating all the CEID and Collector assets. As Vilena and Friday neared the city centre and became more and immersed in the crowds gathering around the First Security Bank, they began receiving their first intelligence via the network.
404 and EFK are on the ground and moving in across the lake. I am setting up the battlespace...now.
A thorough image of the city whirled into existence, colorful and complicated beyond comprehension of unaugmented minds, simultaneously delivering several layers of important information in an organized and clear manner, with special consideration to the wide open plaza in the center of the city, surrounded by numerous government and banking institutions.
Good. We’re approaching the bank., Friday communicated in this strange way that took microseconds to express, yet delivered so much more information than talking.
Remember the plan. We only get one shot at this.
The women soon entered the Government Plaza and pushed through crowds of onlookers towards the perimeter. They behest the impressive display of military and police hardware patrolling the perimeter.
They’re just getting organized, Friday observed,
They’ll start scattering the crowds any minute now.
They stayed in place, safe for the time being, watching and carefully analyzing the information collated for them by The Eye, looking for vulnerabilities or any sign of Legion’s activity. Each second the robot merc did nothing meant more police arrived, more security holes got patched by government CIs and, of course, it was another second closer to Vilena and Friday getting their heavy support.
We might be overestimating him, it was Friday again,
An attempt to infiltrate that place now would be suicide.
Vilena didn’t transmit a reply, but the sidebands clearly indicated that she, too, disbelieved Legion could pull it off, Collector hacking techniques notwithstanding.
Time passed. Planetary Police sappers arrived and entered the building, no doubt to check it for explosives. Eye’s microcameras swarmed through streets and buildings, constantly changing ID codes and disguises, camouflaged as media drones, maintenance bots or police assets. They wormed their way into any building they could, checking out for snipers and hidden observers.
We are in position., 404 reported, and the battlespace helpfully indicated the location of the last two Collectors. 404’s partner, the gigantic killbot, didn’t even try to hide: it strode amongst the crowd, emitting police ID tags and displaying Planetary Police insignia with its holo emitters. Friday had to admit she was impressed with both the subtlety and sheer audacity of that approach, and judging from the sidebands - so was
Dollmaster, who had a much clearer picture of the EW activity involved in pulling that off.
No contact., The Eye reported dutifully.
Should we move in?, the Killbot seemed...impatient. His transmissions seemed almost like a growling animal...for Friday, they reminded her of Bragulan minds she had the opportunity to probe.
Negative. The target may be attempting to draw us out into the open. Standby., Dollmaster tempered him. The CI was running through hundreds of thousands of scenarios, taking into account all the thousands upon thousands of factors and variables that comprised the situation. Simultaneously, it was running electronic interference with Zubrichian military and police networks, and attempting to evade detection by orbital patrols. It was satisfied by the fact that it could finally make some use of a large chunk of its processing capacity: it wasn’t often the brooding CI had the opportunity to be challenged, even slightly.
Movement in the crowd, another communique from The Eye broke the routine and introduced an extra set of variables. There were several people trying to leave the crowd at the same time. Time seemed to slow down, as enhance situational processors of everyone involved analyzed the situation. And then, the final straw.
I am detecting shielded plasma explosives.
Briefly, Vilena flinched, as if she wanted to cry ‘bomb’ to save as many people as possible, but that would betray their position. Friday had no such compunctions: she began swiftly moving away from the explosives, caring little for the people around her, using psychic influence to create a path and wall of bodies shielding her from the explosives.
And then, something happened. Sudden bursts of activity on police radio crossed the battlespace with an emerald flare, followed immediately by policemen beginning to hastily widen the perimeter around the bank. Bullhorns blared, urging people to move back. The crowd wavered and squeezed together and began moving back, creating a tightly packed mass of people.
Creating a target, Vilena realized.
It’s an engineered situation., Dollmaster summarized quickly, one step ahead of everyone else who wasn’t a CI,
There’s been a call from inside the bank claiming there are bombs inside. Probable purpose is distraction of the police forces present, secondary goal is probably exposing our assets for termination.
Orders?, Friday asked with surprising calm
Play dead, was the split-second response.
Then the entire square exploded.
Flashes of white-hot energy erupted from deceptively small packages, instantly converting the air around them into plasma and creating an overpressure wave. Plasma explosives were not a particularly good choice for antipersonnel work, but they made impressive blasts, terrifying and powerful, setting people on fire, scorching lungs and burning out eyes. Mushroom clouds rose, the temperature difference sucking in debris and body parts and then scattering them like a cyclone. As a byproduct, the explosives also emitted a large pulse of radiation. Major parts of the police network went dark instantly, rid of input from their drones and cameras. Military networks did not, as they were hardened against such an occurrence, which led to an instant and terrible information deficiency and spiraling assumptions from police officers on the scene.
And, of course, the crowd panicked. Then the shooting started, and some military drones shot back, and things started going even more to hell. Heavy ordnance raked windows, police fired on the military and the military shot back, civilians were fleeing in panic with police drones attempting to chase down misidentified suspects. Friday saw such things more than once in her lifetime, during training and afterwards, when advanced star nations of the galaxy attacked places with not enough sophistication in their military. Solarian doctrine especially favored strikes against enemy control and communications networks, lightning raids against command centres and other, more subtle techniques at sowing confusion and chaos. Apparently, Legion’s Collector training went along similar lines, only taken one step further - Zubrich was not your usual shitworld, after all, even if it was still a step below a major star nation in technology and organization.
Fortunately, the CEID shadownet was robust and resillient, and the minds controlling it were far more powerful than anything installed on Zubrich. Not one CEID or Collector agent had lost coordination or situational awareness, and they sprung into action the moment
Dollmaster ascertained the situation and distributed the orders, which only took the slightest moment.
HQ, First Security Bank of Zubrich
Moments later
Code: Select all
First security ring subverted. Waiting for access to second ring.
The Maibatsu Type 23 assault frame was a favorite of Legion’s for a while now. It had the sort of perfect blend of agility, brute power, ease of maintenace and electronic warfare gear to make it - with certain modifications, of course - the ideal tool for doing high profile mercenary work in Wild Space.
The only tool Legion liked better than a Type 23 frame were two of them in tandem.
The lobby filled with bullets almost instantly after the plasma explosives detonated. Cops guarding it were still focused on the bomb threat manufactured by their system, and never expected the assault. Nevertheless they quickly responded, pushing the mysterious attacker back with automatic fire which shredded the art-deco interior and set parts of it on fire.
Legion’s second body waited for an opportunity high above, near the “artificially created” entry point, and ended the brief firefight quickly with a burst of grenades, before leaping down two stories.
The two faces of the same robotic mercenary looked at each, exchanging a few electronic data packets, and proceeded deeper into the building.
Government plaza
He’s inside! Damn he’s good..., Friday let slip, a hint of emotions long suppressed leaking onto the sidebands. The square was a scene of absolute, absurd chaos, with police holding a perimeter around the bank and attempting to fend off attacks by the military - and all inadvertedly protecting Legion from the CEID and Collectors.
Dollmaster, this whole thing is going to shit. We need to act now or the target will close our only remaining lead.
Intelligences exchanged data and ran more simulations, a flurry of ethereal communications when they evaluated risks and tried to see through enemy strategy. It only took microseconds, real time as far as organics were concerned. And the results were quite worrisome: it almost seemed as if they were being manipulated into taking certain paths through the whole debacle. Dollmaster had to admit the elegance of this approach: the sheer brutality left little room for maneuvering. The whole situation was reduced to a simple binary decision.
You are authorized to go in. Any means necessary., Dollmaster pulsed dryly. The CI seemed dismayed at the turn of events.
Their government won’t like it, Friday, on the other hand, obviously didn’t give a damn. She just wanted it on record.
We should be able to handle it. Apprehend the target.
Fine. We’re moving to breach the perimeter.
The Collector killbot growled with poorly hidden satisfaction.