Eric and the Quantum Dragon

Mighty Bots Scrapyard, Haven City, outside of Pan City Walls, POZ

Tuesday December 25th, V26 (2046)

It was after midnight on Christmas Eve, which technically made it Christmas Day. Naomi Tengaki was crouched behind a rusted pile of scrap Auto-Cab shells, dressed in lightweight body armour with the Brackenridge Secure logo on the left breast. She had a short barrelled machine pistol in her hands, one of the 5mm Caseless models with almost no recoil.

“Team One is in position” came the voice of her Strike team leader, an ex-Marine from the Northern Bloc who was taller than a Guard clone but far less handsome.

“Copy that, Martinez” Naomi replied. “Team Two are ready. We go on your signal” She looked behind her at the five person team of Security personnel, elite men and women who had proven their loyalty to the company many times over. All were armed and armoured with the best equipment her Security budget would allow.

She returned her gaze to the two storey building at the heart of the robotics scrapyard. It was newly built from concrete panels and recycled plastics, the head office for a vicious new company in Haven City. According to the confessions they got from the warehouse raiders, this was where their employer based himself.

The target was Quent Scarfe, a man not long ago at the very bottom of the food chain, scavenging robot parts for a living. Now he ran a growing part of the legal scrap business and a larger part of the local criminal network.

Naomi wondered how he had lifted himself out of the muck to become such a player so quickly. The man must have connections to someone outside of the Zone and it was her job to capture him and find out what those were.

The scrapyard was quiet, the old mesh link fence that surrounded the piles of broken machinery full of holes. It was through these the Security teams had crawled, encountering no sentries or guard dogs.

“How are their security systems looking, Oracle?” Naomi checked in with her Net Diver. He was back at the Brackenridge Headquarters, monitoring the network during the assault.

“All green, boss” he assured her over the comms headset she wore. “I am blocking a couple of thermal sensors and a motion detector. They are pretty basic with their security if you ask me. I expected more from them”

“Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth” she rebuked him. “If they won’t install decent security systems, they should not complain when they get raided!”

At that moment her Strike Team leader came over the headsets, sending a message to all twelve members of the two teams.

“We have a green light!” he declared. “Team One, follow me. Team Two, head for the southern entrance as planned. Go! Go! Go!”

Naomi surged to her feet, her gun linked to her internal processor and confirming it was ready to fire.

“Team Two, on me!” she called out and raced between the towering piles of junk, aiming herself at the rear entrance to the scrapyard offices. Behind her the men and women scrambled to keep up with their over enthusiastic boss.

She was elated, glad to be able to do something more constructive than net diving for clues. Tonight she would redeem herself in the eyes of her boss, that bitch Yolanda Brackenridge. Naomi had nearly reached the target doorway when she heard the first screams.

Screams coming over her headset, followed by the sounds of panic firing. She paused and looked back at her own team, seeing the shocked looks on their faces. They could hear it too.

“What’s happening?” a young female Security officer yelled out, joining her companions in frantic searching of their surrounds.

“Team One, report in!” Naomi shouted into her microphone. “Martinez, come in!”

“The whole yard, it just came alive!” her team leader said in wild panic. Gunfire could be heard close by, echoing over the headsets. “They’re everywhere!” he screamed.

“Team Two, we are falling back!” Naomi shouted but it was too late. All around them the scrap metal and pieces of broken mechanicals started to rise up. A mish-mash of machines, eyes suddenly glowing red from their reconstructed bodies.

Her team began firing wildly and Naomi joined them, her machine pistol buzzing like a chainsaw as she poured Armour Piercing shells into the mechanical horde. Like a tidal wave of multi-limbed steel and plastic insects they washed over her people, driving them screaming into the dirt and engulfing them.

Naomi fired continuously, her gun shattering and ripping apart the machines as they forced her back. Then the oversized magazine in her weapon was empty and her back slammed against the concrete wall of the office building.

She had nowhere to go, surrounded by the red eyed machine monsters. With a final act of defiance she hurled her gun at the closest mechanical and drew a stun baton from her belt.

“Oracle, can you hear me?” she snarled into her headset mike. “Oracle, come in!” she demanded but all that came back was a hiss of jamming signals.

From the centre of the waiting mass of robotic death machines came a large mechanical guard hound. It was an older model but similar to the ones she used to protect the Brackenridge warehouses. It had an engraved name plate welded to its chest, visible in the lights of the surrounding machines and she read it easily.

“Hey Fang, who’s a bad boy?” she laughed manically and with a battle-cry charged the beast, swinging her baton with all the strength she could muster.

It wasn’t enough.

=====

The roar of a VTOL flying overhead woke her up. Naomi’s eyes flickered open after a couple of tries, breaking away the gummed up blood and black hydraulic fluid her face was covered in. With slow and painful effort she lifted herself to her knees, her eyes looking in confusion over a battlefield.

To her left the head office for the scrapyard was burning furiously, thick black smoke billowing into the morning sky. She coughed and spat out black phlegm, retching at the taste of burnt plastics. At her feet were smashed mechanicals, her stun baton still wedged in the plastic skull of a maintenance robot.

“She’s here!” a voice called out and Naomi saw a pair of Brackenridge Secure officers picking their way across mounded piles of scrap machinery. Their grey uniforms were pristine, unlike the filth she found herself covered in.

The first officer reached her and offered a bottle of water. She took the lid off with shaking hands and drank deeply. The cool, filtered water soothed her raw throat and she finally felt able to speak.

“What the hell happened?” she croaked and had another coughing fit, spitting out more black phlegm. It landed on the polished black boots of the man who had given her the water and she waved her hands in mute apology.

“It’s Okay, Ma’am” he assured her. “We are just glad to find you alive”

“I’m kind of glad about that myself” she muttered with a voice like an old woman. She held out an arm and the officer obligingly helped her to stand up. From this slightly higher viewpoint she surveyed what remained of the scrapyard.

There were shattered mechanicals all about and amongst them she saw a human arm or leg sticking out. Company medics were moving around, checking bodies. Her heart lifted when she saw the young female officer, Jaze Konis, get pulled out still alive from under a heap of broken robots.

“How many of my team survived?” she demanded, her voice growing stronger as she drank more water.

“We found four alive so far, although they are all injured to some degree” the second officer told her. “Their Enhancements managed to keep them from bleeding out or dying from shock” she explained.

“I understand” Naomi replied. “Probably what saved me too”

She began walking unsteadily towards the burning building, examining the flames with interest.

“Any idea who set that on fire?” she asked her two attendants. They both looked at each other then back to her.

“It was already on fire when the rescue team got here” the male officer answered. “We assumed your teams had set it alight”

“Is that so?” she pondered. “Get a fire crew here to put it out. I want any bodies found inside recovered and sent to the Security HQ”

“Yes Ma’am” they chorused and she walked stiffly away. She saw a VTOL with Brackenridge Transportation logos on the side landed at the edge of the yard so she headed in that direction.

The pilot was drinking coffee beside his aircraft while the wounded and dead were being loaded aboard. She stopped in front of him and held out her hand. He looked at her in confusion so she just reached forward and took the recyclable cup from his hands.

With one long swallow she drained the remaining half of coffee and gave him back the empty cup.

“I need a ride, Pilot” she declared in an emotionless tone.

“Ah, sure Miss Tengaki” he hurriedly agreed. “Where do you want to go?”

“Home” she replied. “Alison is cooking Christmas lunch and I don’t want to be late”

She let the pilot clamber into his cockpit while she found a spare seat next to the other survivors. The men and women, a mix from the two teams, regarded her with haunted eyes.

“Hell of a way to spend Christmas, hey Miss Tengaki?” said one of them. He looked at her with eyes that blinked black and she nodded mutely.

Tengaki Apartment, Residential Tower, 8th District

It broke any number of City regulations, but Naomi did not care about that today. With a blast of jet engines, the VTOL touched down briefly outside of the lobby to her residential tower. Cars honked and pedestrians scurried for cover as she jumped from the open side door.

Once she was clear she waved to the pilot, who nodded back, then lifted the big machine into the air again. Naomi watched it go, standing in her stained and battered tactical armour in the middle of the street. One especially brave driver honked at her, so she walked up to his side window and tapped politely with a gloved knuckle until he wound it down.

“Merry Christmas, Sir” she said with quiet menace and he rushed to wind the window up once more.

Naomi smiled to the pedestrians and other drivers, waving casually as she strolled to her lobby entrance. It took her a moment to fish her smart key out of a pocket under her armour vest, then she walked inside.

The lobby was decorated quite tastefully for the holiday season, but she ignored it all. When the elevator car arrived she stepped inside and tapped her floor number, using the smart key again to prove she really belonged there.

At last, she arrived at her floor and on leaden feet covered the remaining distance to her apartment. The door opened to her ever powerful smart key and she entered her safe space at last.

“Naomi? Is that you honey?” called Alison from the kitchen. “You made it home earlier than I expected”

“Yeah, the mission was a success” Naomi answered, discarding armour and pieces of filthy clothing as she traversed the apartment. “I’m just going to take a shower before lunch”

“Okay” her wife replied, accompanied by the sounds of rattling pots and pans. “Take as long as you need. I won’t serve lunch until you are ready”

Naomi was nearly naked by the time she reached the bathroom and discarded the last items of clothing on the tiled floor. She stepped into the shower booth and turned on the hot water, setting if for as hot and fast as it could go. It blasted her clean as she stood with her head bowed, watching with unblinking eyes as the dirt and filth ran down her bare legs and swirled into the drain.

After a while she looked up and grabbed the soap, scrubbing herself until she was pink and raw. Her short black hair was shampooed and finally she felt like she had left the stench of the scrapyard behind.

At some point Alison had entered the bathroom, stuffing her soiled clothes into the laundry hamper and leaving a fresh white robe hanging off the back of the door. Naomi towelled herself down with the vibrant forest green towels her wife loved so much, then donned the robe.

She could not put off the moment any longer she realised. With a tremble in her body she faced the big mirror set onto the bathroom wall. Her eyes searched out her reflection and she regarded herself. Black oil swirled, darkening the whites of her eyes.

“You’re in there, aren’t you?” she asked herself. Pitch black eyes stared back at her, scaring her down to her very soul.

There was a knock on the door and Alison opened it, smiling at her wife.

“You nearly done, Naomi? No need to get dressed, it’s just us two!”

“Ah, sure” she mumbled in reply. Alison closed the door and Naomi turned to check her reflection. Plain old eyes stared back from her uncertain face.

“I think it may be more than two of us now” she said to herself.