Takeda sipped on her latte at the patio table down the street listening to the com van crew droning on making checks of their gear and what not. “Go for Scorpio, come in agent.”
Ah her old field callsign. Card had the bright idea of making it her horoscope sign when she drew a blank at the question, not that she even bought into such things. At least it was better than the alternative that she’d rather forget. “You three done ogling your gear I take it?”
The command van team for today was Card and two low-level field techs she didn’t know or really care about. This was an insertion into a hostile force with no strike backup. There was nothing the field support personnel could do if it went sideways, so it didn’t matter who was watching. Were it to matter, she had a number of people from E-War division she trusted.
Among them, Card was marginally less tolerant of her talking down to the command team than the rookies. “Focus Takeda, game time.”
“...right... How much of a show do you want me to make out of this?”
“A big one. Drones have four targets inside the building and at least a half dozen militiamen staking out the place.”
The target was a Yakuza safehouse where a handful of up-and-coming enforcers lay in wait to cause all kinds of problems for rivals and debtors alike. When someone didn’t pay their dues on their deal with the Devil, these were the people who came to collect. Needing to play the role of a fellow criminal, there were no fancy sensor beacons this mission. Takeda was back to basics with a P3030, a nanoweave ballistic vest under her shirt, and a backpack loaded with forty pounds of incendiary payload. That would cover most of the necessary fireworks. There was just one concern left: “And our spectators aren’t going to storm the place themselves once I start dropping hostiles?”
“Should be negative on that. They were waiting for some heavy weapons to be delivered but that shipment got nabbed by Black Brethren in transit.”
“I assume there was an anonymous tip involved somewhere that you had absolutely nothing to do with...”
He most certainly had. Card was a master at plausible deniability after all. “Of course not. Why would you suspect something so unethical?” he sneered.
She tried not to spill coffee on herself from chuckling whilst taking a drink. No doubt there was some brilliant blackmailing involved in whatever Card had arranged. “Drones have four tangos inside the building, one patrolling the street, and eight militiamen watching the compound, and clear of peacekeepers,” one of the rookie techs came over her headset, “It's now or never.”
She gave a sigh. She wasn’t adverse to the thought of gunning down the four in the building, so much as the thought of this being different than a normal mark. This was an audition for a gang of ruthless killers. She had to be the ruthless killer once again. “Before we get started...” she trailed off, “... shiroi hebi o mezame sasete mo yoroshīdesu ka?” (Are you sure you want to wake the white snake?)
Only William Card understood what that meant. He gave a rather somber acknowledgement. “We both wish there was an alternative ... but yes.”
Kira gave a nod as if they could see her directly. “Going silent. Tracker and neurolink are on for emergencies. Going in.”
She set down her earpiece and walked down the street.
Rookie tech number one switched one of the monitors over to watching the video feed from Takeda’s neurolink. They could see through her eyes as long as she let them: a byproduct of having optical implants plugged into the same neuro-interface device. Having eyes on an operative was usually a good thing, though as bloody as this was about to get, Card hoped the rookies had strong stomachs.
She knocked on the door and took a step back.
A kid no older than 20 opened it, silver revolver in hand held down at his waist. Takeda and the van team could all see his brain engage in slow motion, registering just who had showed up. The mythical Takeda Kirido, the terror spoken of only in whispers, was suddenly very real for him. He tried to raise the weapon but there was no such thing as beating Takeda Kirido in a quickdraw contest. Not, at least, since her cybernetics were upgraded in accordance with her special agent status.
She grabbed at his wrist and the gun fired past her shoulder.
She yanked him forward onto her extended knee, then planted a fast elbow into the back of his head. Her extended hand down by his gun now caught the kid’s collar as he fell face first towards the cement, and her free hand unholstered her sidearm from the inside of her sport jacket.
She fired two rounds into the back of his head point blank.
Both the younger tech gurus in the van winced when the kid’s brain matter instantly painted the concrete. Card just bowed his head. He’d seen this before, but knowing he unleashed it again was a hard truth to swallow. It had taken years for her to recover the first time. Kira was already in the building, sweeping for the other three who should have been scrambling for weapons.
She turned a corner and put two rounds into the head of the man behind the sofa.
He had been watching the TV maybe 20 seconds ago. Tech Guru One couldn’t take his eyes off the screen in horror and morbid curiosity. Tech Two was monitoring the top-down sensor view which was less brutal to behold. Card half-looked away shamefully but still kept an eye on his operative. She worked with the ruthless efficiency of a professional hitman, double-tapping targets rather than trusting the first bullet to kill, always aiming for the head, and methodically clearing the building.
She sliced the corner and shot the next target twice in the head.
The sensor view showed the last one hiding in the bedroom. Kira was tapped into that sensor feed from the drones despite not having the devices on her directly. She honed in on the target ... a lioness stalking her prey. The mission directive called for four bodies. There would be four bodies; there was no escaping that fact for hunter or hunted. The cold math of black ops never lied, and never changed. She took no pleasure in that, but showed no mercy either.
She leaned around the corner and shot him in the shoulder.
He had a rifle in hand ready to spray her down through the door. The vest could probably stop the rifle’s rounds but the climbing spray of an automatic weapon often spat rounds at head height before the magazine ran dry. Even with a support team on standby, there was no coming back from bullets to the face. All the amazing medical technology Jian Group had access to was not really magic, but that didn’t matter when the wouldbe ambusher was promptly turned into the ambushee.
She trekked up to the writhing male and fired twice.
Even she turned away just slightly when she pulled the trigger on a hapless victim. It seemed to bother her too, returning to the brutality of the underworld. She had warned Card never to awaken the monster. She never wanted to feel that rage again, but here she was. If she got the chance to be with Card in private anytime in the near future, a piece of her mind would be given for it. How soon that would be was very up in the air. She would have done it right here and now had the neurolink feed included audio. Of course that wasn’t the case.
She returned to the living room and set down the backpack bomb.
The device was pre-configured for a 45 second timer. She could be down the street by then and safely clear of the fireblast. It was built for a lot of flash, fire, and visible effects but almost no structural damage. Looking destroyed was good enough; putting the entire structure in the dirt was excessive and overkill. Blowing out some windows and setting it on fire would suffice.
She set the timer and made for the door.
There was one more Yakuza hitter out on the street who would have heard the gunfire and would be on her as soon as she left the building. The com van team was tracking him. And just their luck, a peacekeeper had shown up. Just a beat cop, but nonetheless someone who wouldn’t just sit idly by as a gunfight played out on the littered streets of Ghajotia District. The rookies tried to figure out a way to prevent him from becoming another body, but deep down Card knew the poor soul was about to bite the dust for no fault of his own.
She strolled down the street as the timer counted down.
Card and the rookies could see the timer counting past 20 seconds. The detonation would be the trigger of a gunfight for certain. The peacekeeper was on drone tracking now too with the last Yakuza target. Takeda’s HUD had both lit up for her when the shooting inevitably started. And then the fireball burst through the building windows. The recoil of passersby propagated like a slow-motion blast wave through the street.
She turned around to face the last target and fired twice.
He tried to draw on her too but she had surprise on her side. Her first round was aimed low because of distance, catching him in the chest but only staggering him. Likely he had a vest on, same as she. The follow-up shot was a signature Yakuza execution, planted right between the eyes. Over the roaring inferno billowing smoke thick as tar, the peacekeeper still caught sound of the gunshots, but his holster was ill-suited to a quick draw. He barely had the weapon free by the time Kira had turned on him too.
She took careful aim and only fired once.
She had the time to while he was struggling to get it up. She put her round square in the throat instead of the head. It was the closest thing to mercy she could show given the operational parameters. To the head was basically guaranteed brain death, but on the off chance he had a nano-injector, he had a 50/50 shot at surviving that wound. Card let out a sigh back in the van. That was technically a friendly fire incident, for which the resulting paperwork would be extensive and depressingly detailed.
She holstered her sidearm and kept walking.
Drone scans had four militiamen stacking up in an alley for a snatch’n’grab. The com van team saw it. She saw it. None of them could do anything. That was the mission objective: get noticed by the Militia. She had to go with it. The com van team had it worse. They had no way of telling the difference between successful insertion and sending her to her execution. Even Card couldn’t hide his concern on ops like this. All they could do was watch and hope.
She kept walking.
Ah her old field callsign. Card had the bright idea of making it her horoscope sign when she drew a blank at the question, not that she even bought into such things. At least it was better than the alternative that she’d rather forget. “You three done ogling your gear I take it?”
The command van team for today was Card and two low-level field techs she didn’t know or really care about. This was an insertion into a hostile force with no strike backup. There was nothing the field support personnel could do if it went sideways, so it didn’t matter who was watching. Were it to matter, she had a number of people from E-War division she trusted.
Among them, Card was marginally less tolerant of her talking down to the command team than the rookies. “Focus Takeda, game time.”
“...right... How much of a show do you want me to make out of this?”
“A big one. Drones have four targets inside the building and at least a half dozen militiamen staking out the place.”
The target was a Yakuza safehouse where a handful of up-and-coming enforcers lay in wait to cause all kinds of problems for rivals and debtors alike. When someone didn’t pay their dues on their deal with the Devil, these were the people who came to collect. Needing to play the role of a fellow criminal, there were no fancy sensor beacons this mission. Takeda was back to basics with a P3030, a nanoweave ballistic vest under her shirt, and a backpack loaded with forty pounds of incendiary payload. That would cover most of the necessary fireworks. There was just one concern left: “And our spectators aren’t going to storm the place themselves once I start dropping hostiles?”
“Should be negative on that. They were waiting for some heavy weapons to be delivered but that shipment got nabbed by Black Brethren in transit.”
“I assume there was an anonymous tip involved somewhere that you had absolutely nothing to do with...”
He most certainly had. Card was a master at plausible deniability after all. “Of course not. Why would you suspect something so unethical?” he sneered.
She tried not to spill coffee on herself from chuckling whilst taking a drink. No doubt there was some brilliant blackmailing involved in whatever Card had arranged. “Drones have four tangos inside the building, one patrolling the street, and eight militiamen watching the compound, and clear of peacekeepers,” one of the rookie techs came over her headset, “It's now or never.”
She gave a sigh. She wasn’t adverse to the thought of gunning down the four in the building, so much as the thought of this being different than a normal mark. This was an audition for a gang of ruthless killers. She had to be the ruthless killer once again. “Before we get started...” she trailed off, “... shiroi hebi o mezame sasete mo yoroshīdesu ka?” (Are you sure you want to wake the white snake?)
Only William Card understood what that meant. He gave a rather somber acknowledgement. “We both wish there was an alternative ... but yes.”
Kira gave a nod as if they could see her directly. “Going silent. Tracker and neurolink are on for emergencies. Going in.”
She set down her earpiece and walked down the street.
Rookie tech number one switched one of the monitors over to watching the video feed from Takeda’s neurolink. They could see through her eyes as long as she let them: a byproduct of having optical implants plugged into the same neuro-interface device. Having eyes on an operative was usually a good thing, though as bloody as this was about to get, Card hoped the rookies had strong stomachs.
She knocked on the door and took a step back.
A kid no older than 20 opened it, silver revolver in hand held down at his waist. Takeda and the van team could all see his brain engage in slow motion, registering just who had showed up. The mythical Takeda Kirido, the terror spoken of only in whispers, was suddenly very real for him. He tried to raise the weapon but there was no such thing as beating Takeda Kirido in a quickdraw contest. Not, at least, since her cybernetics were upgraded in accordance with her special agent status.
She grabbed at his wrist and the gun fired past her shoulder.
She yanked him forward onto her extended knee, then planted a fast elbow into the back of his head. Her extended hand down by his gun now caught the kid’s collar as he fell face first towards the cement, and her free hand unholstered her sidearm from the inside of her sport jacket.
She fired two rounds into the back of his head point blank.
Both the younger tech gurus in the van winced when the kid’s brain matter instantly painted the concrete. Card just bowed his head. He’d seen this before, but knowing he unleashed it again was a hard truth to swallow. It had taken years for her to recover the first time. Kira was already in the building, sweeping for the other three who should have been scrambling for weapons.
She turned a corner and put two rounds into the head of the man behind the sofa.
He had been watching the TV maybe 20 seconds ago. Tech Guru One couldn’t take his eyes off the screen in horror and morbid curiosity. Tech Two was monitoring the top-down sensor view which was less brutal to behold. Card half-looked away shamefully but still kept an eye on his operative. She worked with the ruthless efficiency of a professional hitman, double-tapping targets rather than trusting the first bullet to kill, always aiming for the head, and methodically clearing the building.
She sliced the corner and shot the next target twice in the head.
The sensor view showed the last one hiding in the bedroom. Kira was tapped into that sensor feed from the drones despite not having the devices on her directly. She honed in on the target ... a lioness stalking her prey. The mission directive called for four bodies. There would be four bodies; there was no escaping that fact for hunter or hunted. The cold math of black ops never lied, and never changed. She took no pleasure in that, but showed no mercy either.
She leaned around the corner and shot him in the shoulder.
He had a rifle in hand ready to spray her down through the door. The vest could probably stop the rifle’s rounds but the climbing spray of an automatic weapon often spat rounds at head height before the magazine ran dry. Even with a support team on standby, there was no coming back from bullets to the face. All the amazing medical technology Jian Group had access to was not really magic, but that didn’t matter when the wouldbe ambusher was promptly turned into the ambushee.
She trekked up to the writhing male and fired twice.
Even she turned away just slightly when she pulled the trigger on a hapless victim. It seemed to bother her too, returning to the brutality of the underworld. She had warned Card never to awaken the monster. She never wanted to feel that rage again, but here she was. If she got the chance to be with Card in private anytime in the near future, a piece of her mind would be given for it. How soon that would be was very up in the air. She would have done it right here and now had the neurolink feed included audio. Of course that wasn’t the case.
She returned to the living room and set down the backpack bomb.
The device was pre-configured for a 45 second timer. She could be down the street by then and safely clear of the fireblast. It was built for a lot of flash, fire, and visible effects but almost no structural damage. Looking destroyed was good enough; putting the entire structure in the dirt was excessive and overkill. Blowing out some windows and setting it on fire would suffice.
She set the timer and made for the door.
There was one more Yakuza hitter out on the street who would have heard the gunfire and would be on her as soon as she left the building. The com van team was tracking him. And just their luck, a peacekeeper had shown up. Just a beat cop, but nonetheless someone who wouldn’t just sit idly by as a gunfight played out on the littered streets of Ghajotia District. The rookies tried to figure out a way to prevent him from becoming another body, but deep down Card knew the poor soul was about to bite the dust for no fault of his own.
She strolled down the street as the timer counted down.
Card and the rookies could see the timer counting past 20 seconds. The detonation would be the trigger of a gunfight for certain. The peacekeeper was on drone tracking now too with the last Yakuza target. Takeda’s HUD had both lit up for her when the shooting inevitably started. And then the fireball burst through the building windows. The recoil of passersby propagated like a slow-motion blast wave through the street.
She turned around to face the last target and fired twice.
He tried to draw on her too but she had surprise on her side. Her first round was aimed low because of distance, catching him in the chest but only staggering him. Likely he had a vest on, same as she. The follow-up shot was a signature Yakuza execution, planted right between the eyes. Over the roaring inferno billowing smoke thick as tar, the peacekeeper still caught sound of the gunshots, but his holster was ill-suited to a quick draw. He barely had the weapon free by the time Kira had turned on him too.
She took careful aim and only fired once.
She had the time to while he was struggling to get it up. She put her round square in the throat instead of the head. It was the closest thing to mercy she could show given the operational parameters. To the head was basically guaranteed brain death, but on the off chance he had a nano-injector, he had a 50/50 shot at surviving that wound. Card let out a sigh back in the van. That was technically a friendly fire incident, for which the resulting paperwork would be extensive and depressingly detailed.
She holstered her sidearm and kept walking.
Drone scans had four militiamen stacking up in an alley for a snatch’n’grab. The com van team saw it. She saw it. None of them could do anything. That was the mission objective: get noticed by the Militia. She had to go with it. The com van team had it worse. They had no way of telling the difference between successful insertion and sending her to her execution. Even Card couldn’t hide his concern on ops like this. All they could do was watch and hope.
She kept walking.