Into the Black

Thanks to some… enhanced interrogation techniques, mainly involving abusing the hell out of my mental Psy powers, I learned that the Red Orchids didn’t have a huge presence in Alpha Centauri, but they were here, and they did claim part of the station as their home base. The local Oyabun was, apparently, some of the extended family of the Oyabun from Choson Ring. If I was getting this right, they were cousins or second cousins. Anyways, they were related, which is why the death of that oyabun and his men made it an honor thing to try and go after me.

Mita Saburo

Human Male

Level 25

Titles: Guardian, Thug, Captured

Futaki Teijo

Human Male

Level 10

Titles: Programmer, Captured

After the interrogations, I got to try out those capture balls, and they worked like a charm! I figured I’d keep these two on ice for a while, until I needed disposable goons. Since they were in the stasis field, I didn’t need to worry about feeding them, housing them, or anything! Really quite convenient.

At any rate, I needed to make sure that the local Oyabun understood just how badly he had fucked up, and give him a reason not to try and send anyone else after me. Which meant I needed leverage to hold over his head. Distasteful as it might be, the Oyabun was a family man. And according to my reading, the idea of holding hostages to ensure ‘friendly’ relations was an understood (if not always appreciated) tactic.

Which is why we were in the posh residential section of the station, dressed like we were going to war, guns out and ready like were the magnificent fucking seven. Yeah, seven. See, I’d made sure once we had a physical avatar for Raven that could wear clothes and hold weapons (among other things), that she had armor and weapons to use, in case things got bad. Which, considering the attempt on the ship, was a good thing.

Now, we were going to pay the Yakuza a home visit. Normally, there’d be a lot of security and other crap to keep people from doing things like this, because Yaks tend to like not getting shot in their beds, same as anyone else. Fortunately for us, I had two captured flunkies that were… well, not happy, but how they felt about helping me didn’t matter, since they didn’t have a choice. They had codes to access the Yak networks, which is all Raven needed, with me backing her up, to turn off all the security systems (including some nasty ways of dealing with intruders).

That meant we only needed to deal with the thirty or forty armed guards. Since I didn’t want to leave a bloodbath behind like last time (getting chased off the station, again, wasn’t in the plan), we stocked up on the nonlethal fun and games.

Krupp Arms Model 2530

Type

Assault Rifle

Rank

Common

Damage

40 – 65

Damage Type

Piercing

Created by Krupp Arms, one of Earth’s oldest weapons companies, the Model 2530 is considered by many to be the entry level into psyshot assault weaponry. As with other psyshot weapons, it uses condensed Psy as ammunition, and attacks Energy Armor. Select fire allows user to switch between 3 round bursts, and full auto fire. The Model 2530 is unique amongst other entry-level weapons of its type due to having a ‘Kill’ or ‘Stun’ selector, allowing the user to choose less lethal Stun rounds.

Durability 50/50

50 shot clips. (150 PP to recharge)

Stun Shots: Stun shots deal Stun damage. If Stun damage equals current HP, target becomes unconscious. Stun damage heals at a rate of (CON/10) per minute.

Upgrade: Smartgun – A miniature camera mounted on the barrel works with onboard targeting software and a user’s HUD or similar to increase accuracy with this weapon by 25%.

Yeah, we were breaking out the rifles we had taken from the goons on Choson Ring. They shot well, and I was able to use the smartgun features with the HUD on my goggles, which made what I was about to do much easier.

Humans like having individual structures. Not that we can’t survive ship life, or in a station like Choson Ring, but if we have the option, we like to have individual structures creating a skyline. It comes from being a surface-dwelling species, I guess. Anyways, in this habitat dome, there were highrises towards the center (most room under the dome means highest buildings and greatest population density), but out here, in the outskirts the buildings were mostly one- or two-story affairs, and were largely owned by the wealthy, who enjoyed having some privacy.

So when we stepped out of the transit tube in front of Oyabun Umeda Arata’s residence, there was a healthy separation from the next nearest house, enforced by high walls. The two guards in front of the gate, however, were not nearly as understanding about our need to have a ‘chat’ with the Oyabun, but a Mind Pulse to stun them, followed by quick takedowns allowed us to get through the gate.

We didn’t hang out by the gate. That would be stupid. We quickly stripped the guards, and hid them in the guard shack by the gate. Raven used this time to access the internal network, and we had a layout of the place, as well as internal sensors showing us where everyone was.

Pro tip: it is a lot easier to ambush guards if you hijack their own cameras to see where they are.

We rushed the outbuilding where Umeda kept his family members, quickly stunning the men guarding the door. Most of the security was focused on the main building, guarding the Oyabun himself, after all. Four against seven wasn’t exactly a walk in the park, but speed and surprise goes a long way to making that even worse on the defenders. Just like that, a fifth of the Oyabun’s defenders were down, but the others were now on alert. We’d have to be careful moving forward.

Umeda Anii

Human Female

Level 56

Titles: Companion, Guardian, Assassin, Captured

Umeda Chikako

Human Female

Level 2

Titles: Captured

Umeda Sui

Human Female

Level 10

Titles: Professional, Captured

Umeda Sakae

Human Female

Level 15

Titles: Artisan, Captured

Mental Psy Mastery increased to 5/100.

+1 INT

The loving family was huddled in the living room. The mother seemed to be a former hitwoman, or bodyguard, as well as a companion. Useful combination, and probably where she met the Oyabun. Would have been a nasty fight if I hadn’t hit her with the capture ball first after unleashing a Mind Pulse on the room. The three daughters of the family were age 8, 15, and 18, respectively. I captured them all in the capture balls, since they worked extremely well for hostage situations.

There were also three sons in the living quarters, but I decided to allow them to remain free. Instead, they were each stunned into unconsciousness, and then tied securely so they wouldn’t get in any trouble. Looking over to Raven, I said, “How many more?”

“Twenty-four fighters remaining, and two VIPs. Looks like the Oyabun and his advisor. Ten men moving towards this building.” Raven was able to keep track of the security cameras, since she was in the system, even while she controlled this physical avatar. An AI’s capabilities were pretty impressive!

I shook my head to clear my thoughts of such things. There would be more time to do an in-depth comparison of AI versus Chimera advantages later, when I wasn’t planning on shooting a Yakuza boss and his men. Slipping back to the door, I peeked around the corner, in time to have a flurry of bullets hit the wall behind me. Yeah, ten men out there.

Jaynie slid to the other side of the doorway. We both pulled out flash-bang grenades, and pulled the pins. We did a three-count, and let them fly. As soon as the pretty light and loud sound reached us, we burst through the door, stepping to the side to clear the way for the others as they rushed past us, all of us firing on the men who had been caught with no cover to be found. All of them went down.

Our tactics weren’t exactly ground-shaking, of course. They were all just variations of the basic entry-team tactics that have been used by military and police forces for decades. Unless you were prepared to fight against them, then those tactics were very effective in the close-quarters fights like we were dealing with here. I just had to keep it in my head that we were just as susceptible to them as our enemies were.

And there was evidence of that, as we neared the door of the main house, and had a grenade come flying out at us. I bit back a curse as I used Telekinesis to throw the grenade back. I only managed to get it just inside the doors before it went off.

I groaned as I got up from where the blast had thrown me. Checking my HP, I could see I was at 523/750. If I hadn’t tossed the grenade back in, it would have been much, much worse. Especially if the building had actually been made of wood, like it pretended to be, since that would have turned into so much shrapnel and shredded us. Instead, we were all hurting, myself more than the rest, but we were alive.

Turning to look through the door, I could see that the blast had thrown the nearest of the guards to the ground, though I couldn’t see how badly they were hurt. The blast seemed to have shaken everyone in the room, though. Good, they deserved that for trying to blow me up. Shakily, I decided that my rifle wasn’t going to do me much good right now.

One of the men was on a landing overlooking the entrance hall. I saw him lifting another grenade. Fuck that noise! A Psybolt to the face made him drop the grenade. Didn’t manage to make him drop it at his feet, but it did fall down to the floor below, in the middle of a group of three who were crouching behind a piece of furniture. The grenade took them out nicely.

By this point, Jaynie and Cali, who hadn’t taken as much damage as I had, were past me, bursting through the door with the others. Soon everyone was down. A few were likely to be dead before too long, if they didn’t seek medical help. Now that I had some time to think, I activated my Regeneration power, speeding up my healing.

Physical Psy Mastery increased to 2/100.

+1 INT

Force Psy Mastery increased to 2/100.

+1 INT

Looting the bracers from the fallen proved profitable, of course, but I’d wait until I was aboard ship to think about that. After I stopped seeing two of everything (I was really lucky to have hit the bastard with that Psybolt), we made our way upstairs, moving forward until we got to what was set up as some kind of throne room, where the Oyabun held court over his gumi.

Inside, I saw six people. Two men, clearly the Oyabun and his advisor, sat in the lotus position on cushions at one end of the hall. Between them and us were four men, dressed in a modern version of samurai armor. Clearly custom work, fitted to those individuals, and probably made them combat gods. In addition to katanas, they also had heavy machine guns. Whatever else the armor did, it clearly massively enhanced their strength, as they were able to hold the heavy weapons one-handed, with their sword in the other thand.

Deciding now would be a good time to start the talking, I pulled out one of the capture balls, and released the Oyabun’s wife into the hall. She looked around, surprised, and there was a yell from the Oyabun, before a ray of light struck the woman and she was sucked back into the stasis field of the capture ball.

I cleared my throat, and said, “Now that I have your attention, Umeda-dono, let me say that I have your wife and daughters. As long as I am safe, they shall remain safe, unharmed, untouched, and unaware of everything that passes. Since you seem to think it is fair to attack me and my crew, then I shall attack you. Your wife and daughters will be my guests until such time as the bounty placed upon me by the Red Orchid Clan is revoked, and your organization foreswears further violence against me and mine. Do this, and your family will be released to you. Attack me or mine again, and who knows where they may end up? As proof that I am a reasonable person, you will find that your men are all still alive, and the only serious wounds came from your own troops being rather free in their use of grenades while in enclosed spaces.”

“Now, we’ll see ourselves out. I sincerely hope that we never have cause to see eachother again.” And with that, I used a smoke grenade to cover our escape.

On the way back to the ship, I saw that, between the loot we got off the bracers, and Raven ‘accidentally’ accessing certain accounts the Yakuza had access to, we were flush with money again, having gained a cool 200K credits, and I was only about ten thousand XP from level 20.

Sometimes it was good to be a bad guy.