Stray Cat Strut

Chapter Forty-One - Recreational Urban Warfare

Chapter Forty-One - Recreational Urban Warfare

Anon: "Sunrise Technologies... the Future, Today!"

Anon: "No, that's too cheesy."

Anon: "Our in-house AI came up with it. I think it's a perfect slogan."

Anon: "Our in-house AI is a fucking moron."

--Sunrise Technology, Discussion Chat, 2055

***

"What the fuck are we supposed to do about this?" I asked.

Chonker the remote controlled cat had managed to spring up and onto one of the workbenches. Its head scanned left to right, so I got a nice panoramic picture of the entire space. There was a lot of tech here. Nothing too big. Mostly it looked like discarded guns, some small containers, lots of medical stuff, I noted, as well as gun mags, loose ammo, healing inhalers, filtration devices.

Basically a lot of small quickly discarded crap. I had left some of that kind of crap here and there myself, and I guessed that I wouldn't mind someone picking it up and trying to figure out how it worked.

The table next to one of my prosthetics had what looked like a quadrupedal turret drone. It was a big bulky thing, with armoured legs and a twin-barrelled gun in its centre. The entire thing was partially melted from the front, and it looked like it had lost a fight with one of the freakier sorts of antithesis.

There's another of your drones here. And Atyacus found a flying scout drone that belonged to Gomorrah here as well.

Myalis highlighted a couple of the cubicles at the back in red. It looked like they were filled to the brim with scrap.

"It looks like a lot of junk," Gomorrah said. With her mask on, it was impossible to tell if she was looking at me or at what Chonker was capturing for us, but I assumed we were looking at the same thing.

"Yeah, but it's samurai junk," I said. "Probably worth a small fortune to the right collector. I don't know if I should be angry about them reverse-engineering some of this stuff or not," I said.

It wasn't all bad, obviously. Lots of modern tech was based on shit that samurai had bought and distributed. Tech had to improve, and being able to steal from other, more advanced tech was probably the cheapest, easiest way to improve things.

The concerning part was the weird secrecy of this place. And the fact that they'd stolen my shit to disassemble it. "Myalis, is samurai gear tagged? Like, can you tell who bought what?"

Yes, of course. There are serial sequences encoded onto most items.

"Like a serial number?" I asked.

Somewhat more complex, but for the purposes of keeping things simple, yes.

"Alright, so can you look at that junk and tell what belongs to who?"

Certainly. Though my awareness doesn't necessarily allow me to communicate that information to you.

Right, our AI had a whole thing about privacy going on. At least between samurai. Myalis didn't seem to do more than pass lip-service when it came to the privacy of anyone else.

I can confirm the presence of four items that are yours. Three from Gomorrah. That is, not counting the prosthetics.

"Looks like one surveillance drone I used... well before we met, and two tanks of fuel for my flame throwers," Gomorrah said. "Some of these things I used a while ago. I don't know what I'd even do with them now."

"If it was just samurai trash, I don't think I'd have any sort of problem with this whole operation," I said. "Can you figure out who this is?"

Sunrise Technologies.

I blinked. That name was eerily familiar. "Wait... aren't those the fucks who tried to kidnap Katallina?"

"They did kidnap her," Gomorrah said. "We un-kidnapped her. Isn't she still staying at your place?"

"Yeah," I said. "What the fuck, I though I'd ruined that company?"

You emptied their accounts. It seems as if that didn't really do much. It was clear that they were a company designed to take the fall for others already, and it seems as if that purpose continues here.

"And I bet that figuring out who actually owns them is going to be a nightmare," I said. I rubbed at my face. "Right. I'm calling the Family about this. Some of the shit in there is theirs, right?"

I can't confirm that definitively. However, it's statistically improbable that, out of several thousand Vanguard-quality items seemingly gathered from around this city, not a single one belongs to a member of the Family.

I groaned. "Alright. Gom, can you keep an eye on things. I need to call... fuck, what was the name of that weasely secretary guy from the Family? The one I keep bullying?"

"You're bullying a secretary?" Gomorrah asked. Her voice was flat, more so than usual, even.

"He's a bureaucrat," I said, which judging by her indifferent shrug, was enough of an excuse to pass. I searched through my contact's list, which was much longer than I remembered it being. It used to only have Lucy, a few of the kittens, and some of the kittens that had 'graduated' from the orphanage and which I grabbed the numbers of.

I... probably should check up on some of them, even if they were older than I was and probably doing alright for themselves. Or so I hoped.

My contact list now had a few samurai, some people I'd met, and others that I couldn't remember. "Myalis, is this your doing?"

I included notes.

I found an Eric on the list and opened the contact. There were, in fact, notes. A small head-on image of Eric that looked like it was from some paperwork, a small profile beneath that. Nothing extensive, but enough to remind me of who he was. "Huh. Thanks," I said before I tapped call.

You're welcome. I'm not overly fond of secretarial work, but it's hardly an imposition.

"Still, appreciate you doing it," I said.

Oh. I'm not. I offloaded that to a smaller AI I designed to take care of it for me. I have better things to do with my uptime.

The call connected before I really had time to figure that out.

One screen had an image of Eric's face. It looked like he was parked in some cubicle, staring at a webcam. The lower screen was of myself, as seen from above and at an angle. I turned that way, then noticed my warmech staring at me. Neat. "Hey," I said.

"Hello, Miss Stray Cat? How can I help you? Did you want an update on the sewer situation?"

Oh, shit, I'd almost forgotten about that. "Not just yet," I said, trying to keep my cool. "So, you know how I'm on vacation?"

"Yes?" he asked. There was a lot of trepidation in that one word.

"Well, one thing led to another, and it started a gang war, of sorts? If PMCs and mercenary teams count as gangs."

"Your... vacation started that?"

"Yeah," I said. "Anyway, I ran into a sort of... samurai-tech cache? It's a big building, lots of remote-controlled shit, chock-full of stolen samurai gear. Mostly disposables, but there's guns, ammo, explosives, medical tech. Probably a few thousand points worth of random stuff."

"A few... okay," Eric said. He wiped his brow. "Okay. Yes, that is something we'd like to look into. Is it a storage unit?"

"Nah. Here, Myalis, can your secretary AI send Eric some of the pics Chonkers took?"

"Chonkers?" Eric asked.

His eyes widened as he obviously received a packet from Myalis. Then he stared off into space for a few long moments. "Is that a fully-automated site?"

"Looks like it," I said. "Deconstruction and disassembly and maybe some reverse engineering shit. They stole from me, and I, uh, kinda hired some mercs to track my stuff for me. The company is called Sunrise Technologies. They've fucked around in the past. Didn't find out hard enough."

Eric was nodding along.

He was probably thinking of all the ways this could be good publicity, or good for his career. Or maybe how this was making me forget about the sewers, which it admittedly had. But he didn't need to know about that last part.

I cleared my throat and Eric jumped. "So, do you want the Family to secure the site?"

"That'd be nice," I said.

"We'll have a team there within an hour," he promised. "And did you want a portion of the profits?"

I almost repeated that last part aloud, but I caught myself. "That'd be... more than nice. Also, Gomorrah is here. She helped."

"Yes, of course. We can make sure she gets a fair share as well. Thank you for calling, Stray Cat. Is there, ah, anything else I can help you with?"

"Uh... no?" I tried. I noticed that Rac and her team were arguing nearby, which meant they weren't watching the PMCs as much as they should. I was going to have to step in. "I'll be waiting for your team. Tell them to make it snappy, and maybe come loaded for trouble."

***