Good Neighbors, Bad Neighbors (3)

After finishing his business deal with Vik, Mark continues with his second task for the day.

"Time to put the fear of God in those pirate wannabe, isn't it right, Solvy?"

Mark likes to imagine that Solvernia agrees with him, since kidnapping people to harvest their organs and cybernetics is the exact behavior that pirates on the Persean Sector would engage.

"If only there was a way for me to decrypt the data this would be much simpler." Unfortunately for Mark, properly interfacing with the encrypted memory shards left behind is beyond his means, since the laboratories are dedicated to research, and the supercomputers are tied behind Space science. "Maybe if I get my get a cyberdeck? I will try to buy a cheap one later."

Thankfully for Mark, he still knew some hacking tricks he acquired during college, and one of the killed Scavs was a dumbass that forgot to protect his data. He now has the address to the Scav cell hideout, and a rough estimate of size of their cell from the contact list of the man.

Jumping into his car, Mark drives through the streets towards his next target, turning on the radio. Mark quickly realizes that most of the stations play similar songs, melodies, and beats.

"Not much different from back home, to be honest. I guess if I want to listen to good music, I will need to make it myself." Fortunately for Mark future musical ventures, the Wube Inc. enhancement package also enhanced his mental faculties to a degree, and he can recall songs and music from his Earth with greater clarity than before.

"I wonder if Sony and other companies still retain the copyright to old music, of if they managed to pull a Disney. What do you think, Solvy?"

Solvernia gives a flat, silent stare at Mark in response.

"Right, not relevant to the job, got it."

Regardless of the content of his musings and one-sided discussion with the Marketable Plushy Solvernia™, Mark successfully arrives at the Scav hideout. Getting out of the car, Mark performs a final checkup of his supplies.

Health packs, check. Armor piercing magazines, check. Standard magazines, check. Shotgun, check. Buckshot ammo, check. Gun turrets, check. Walls, check. Repair packs, check. Grenades, check.

"I will keep that other thing for later, the Scavs are not worth using it. Well, everything's in order. Wish me luck, Solvy."

Mark likes to pretend she smiled back and wished him good luck.

…

"Slow night." One of the pair of Scav guards says to his partner.

"I'm not lending you money." The second half of the pair bluntly answers.

"Oh, come on! I wasn't going to ask you for a loan!"

"You always ask for money, you always gamble it away, and then you always ask for more money. How is this conversation any different from the last fifty we had?"

[spoiler=OST - Steel For Humans]

[/spoiler]

*Tratata* *sploosh*

The first guard body wobbles on its feet for a moment, before dropping on the ground with a loud thud.

"Oh. OH SH-!"

The second guard is interrupted mid-sentence by another burst of machinegun fire, hitting the man's head and exploding his skull.

The Engineer approaches the two bodies, and notes that he can't recover the memory shard, making a note to reserve headshots to troublesome targets before placing the bodies on his inventory. The Engineer enters the building and already he hears the Scavs rushing towards the entrance.

With a flick of his wrist several gun turrets appear on the corridor, greeting the approaching Scavs with a hail of bullets with mechanical precision.

The rest of the Scav gang take up cover behind the walls, staying away from the turrets line of sight. The intruder of their hideout isn't in a hurry to press forward.

"Ублюдок! Someone call backup, Militech is-"

A single grenade flew past the Scav issuing orders, then the entire area exploded violently with weaker walls blowing up in pieces, and pieces of bodies raining blood.

"Граната!" Another Scav yelled, but he was caught by the Engineer's shotgun, dropping on the ground together with other gangsters.

The Scavs are quickly losing ground, and they can't even use their homefield advantage due to the gun turrets left behind by the Engineer preventing the gangsters from flanking the intruder. Some of the Scavengers tries to run, only for their paths to be cut off mysteriously by the sudden appearance of stone walls, or for a line of gun turrets to cut off their escape before it unleashes a hail of bullets.

At the center of the building, the leader of the current cell is sweating profusely as she looks on the installed security cameras monitor and sees the carnage unfolding before her.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck! Who the hell did we anger? Is it Arasaka? Militech? The fucking Vatican?" The leader pauses for a moment, watching the Engineer on the monitor looking up and then aiming his gun upwards. "What?"

The Engineer starts to unload his submachine gun towards the ceiling, trying to hit the Scav leader on the room above his room. At first nothing happened, until the floor started to break up, leaving a fist sized gap between floors.

That was enough for the Engineer, as with a single flick of his wrist, several gun turrets appeared on the upper room, raining bullets until every Scav was dead. Uncaring that the local cell leader just perished, the Engineer repeated the process twice more before he took the stairs to the second floor of the building.

Eventually, the building fell silent, as neither the screams of panic and pain from the Scavs, or the constant stream of bullet fire could be heard.

The only survivor of the massacre was, ironically, the latest victims of the gang, still on the operation table with her guts open. The woman was in incredible pain and delirious, but according to a later account, she was rescued by someone in a strange suit of yellowish armor.

The building where the "Scavenger Gang Massacre" happened would later be investigated by the NCPD, and they would determine that an excessive amount of firepower was used, with at least three areas being hit by powerful explosives. According to their profiling, either the Maelstrom or the Voodoo Boys attacked that cell, with the main reason being the lack of bodies in crime scene and all the security footage being unavailable due to the equipment being physically ripped off from the building.

When asked by the Media why those actions would indicate the involvement of the Maelstrom or the Voodoo Boy gang, the NCPD choose not to comment.